Bamboo bonding in concrete: A critical research

Abstract

— Housing needs across developing countries are at its peak especially due to increasing population growth rate. This has caused a great demand for conventional building materials leading to over-exploitation of natural resources required for their production along with their detrimental effects on the environment. Sustainable construction practices are thus required which involves the application of materials such as bamboo, fly ash, kenaf, etc. Bamboo is a lightweight, cost-effective, environment-friendly material with more than six times the strength by weight ratio compared to steel. This paper reviews the application of bamboo in the form of reinforcement in concrete with detailed aspects focussed on its bond strength development in concrete. Different bamboo reinforcement treatment processes developed in literature combined with their applications and limitations are presented. It was observed that with Sikadur 32 Gel epoxy coating method and with the application of G.I. rolled wires method, 3.25MPa and 9.71MPa of bond strength could be achieved respectively. This highlights that with proper surface treatment processes, bamboo as reinforcement in concrete can develop significant bond strength compared to steel reinforcement. However, issues such as lack of codal guidelines, non-standardized pull out testing mechanism to incorporate density variation of fibers, combined with wide variation in its properties requires further standardization before its mass application.