Development of drift pins and plates made from bamboo fiber for timber structures

Abstract

The law concerning the construction recycling was enforced in Japan in 2002. Therefore, the discretion dismantlement of the building and housing was obligated. As a result, the discretion dismantlement with a wood, wood-based material and metallic joint tools is becoming a problem now. If the joint materials and the whole building materials can be composed of the wood-based material, it is very effective for the dismantlement of building. In addition, wood-based materials have a big advantage to earthquake-proof because of light materials. Bamboo having high-strength fiber is a quick grower, and has received attention as a lingo-cellulosic material. In this research, the drift pin and the plate were made by using the long fiber of the bamboo. The fiber was obtained by alkali treatment. The drift pin was made for the direction of one axis. The plate has three layers, the surface layers were composed of short fibers and the core layer was composed of long fibers. The performance of these joint materials was evaluated by bending and two types of shear tests. The bending strength and young's modulus of the Φ12mm drift pin were 350-400MPa and 50GPa, respectively. The bearing strength of the plate which is parallel to the grain was about 10kN. Moreover, the two types of connection were proposed and tensile strength of both types exceeded 15kN. © 2008 The Society of Materials Science.