Mechanical Properties, Column Buckling Behaviour And Concrete Beam And Slab Reinforcement Behavior Of Bamboo

Abstract

The study focused on the use of Bamboo as reinforcement for reinforced concrete slab and beam samples. A comparison was also made on the use of bamboo as reinforcement against steel reinforcement in concrete. Both beams and slabs designed for bamboo tensile reinforcement equivalent to steel reinforcements resulted in significantly lower failure loads at 63% and 34% respectively of the steel beam and slab equivalents. The mechanical and column buckling behavior in bamboo culms was also studied. The type of bamboo used here was Bambusa vulgaris(yellow bamboo). An average moisture content of 62.1% and 10% were observed for the green and dry bamboo samples used in the study respectively Moisture content was found to have a significant influence in the physical and mechanical properties of bamboo with the strength and stiffness of bamboo being reduced with increase in moisture content. For the column investigations the second moment of area against critical shear of dry bamboo were plotted for both theoretical and actual values measured in the laboratory. Variation factors of 1.50 and 0.48 were observed for green and dry bamboo samples respectively. In the case of second moment of area against critical load the variation numbers were 1.93 and 1.61 for dry and green bamboo respectively. The variation from theoretical values were slightly lower in both cases for green bamboo, this could be due to the effect of moisture content which lowers strength parameters of bamboo.