IS BAMBOO WOOD ?

Let's take a look at Xiaobo Li's thesis : PHYSICAL, CHEMICAL, AND MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF BAMBOO AND ITS UTILIZATION POTENTIAL FOR FIBERBOARD MANUFACTURING, May, 2004

"As a cheap and fast-grown resource with superior physical and mechanical properties compared to most wood species, bamboo offers great potential as an alternative to wood." (p. 2)

"The chemical composition of bamboo is similar to that of wood." (p. 5)

"The lignin values of 20-26% place bamboo at the high end of the normal range or 11-27% reported for non-woody biomass [Bagby 1971] and closely resemble the ranges reported for softwoods (24-37%) and hardwoods (17-30%) [Fengel 1984; Dence 1992]." (p. 21)

"Unlike wood, bamboo has no secondary growth; all gains after it reaches its full height are due to the addition of material to cells after the first year." (p. 28)

Although it's a grass and not a tree, bamboo is a wood-like material.

It "is also one of the oldest building materials used by human kind [Abd.Latif 1990]." (p. 1)

Yet, it's not part of the European construction rules for now.

Anyhow,  with regard to its properties, the material obtained from bamboo can only be classified in the timber category of the Eurocodes.

When talking about construction, bamboo is wood.

WHICH AIM?

In Europe the construction engineering is ruled by a collection of standards : the Eurocodes.

There are ten of them, interconnected :

EN 1990: (Eurocode 0) Basis of structural design

EN 1991: (Eurocode 1) Actions on structures

EN 1992: (Eurocode 2) Design of concrete structures

EN 1993: (Eurocode 3) Design of steel structures

EN 1994: (Eurocode 4) Design of composite steel and concrete structures

EN 1995: (Eurocode 5) Design of timber structures

EN 1996: (Eurocode 6) Design of masonry structures

EN 1997: (Eurocode 7) Geotechnical design

EN 1998: (Eurocode 8) Design of structures for earthquake resistance

EN 1999: (Eurocode 9) Design of aluminium structures

As we can see, some of them are dedicated to the kind of material.

The one obtained from the bamboo grass would belong to the timber category, therefore the Eurocode 5.

The aim of AUREA is to help recognizing this material, in collaboration with the actors of the bamboo and the wood construction networks, and thus, officially allow it for a structural use in Europe.

The ideal Long term aim, up to now, consists in establishing a table of eurocodes-certified characteristics of bamboo as a function of basic properties such as density, diameter, age, height, of a stem.

This way, any designer would be able to get the characteristics of any locally available bamboo, of course under the conditions of a properly harvested, treated and dried material.

This is a long-time matter that also concerns other traditional building materials :

TECHNICAL PERFORMANCE OF TRADITIONAL CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS

Innovation in the use of building materials

16th September 2008

University of Bath, Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering

WORLD BAMBOO CONGRESS 2015

In answer to the call for videos of the organization team, AUREA STRUCTURES joined GREEN TECHNOLOGY and AFIBAD to present a project to the World Bamboo Congress 2015.