CHAPTER 3

PROBLEM FORMULATION AND METHODOLOGY

3.1 Opening remarks

Bamboo is perennial, grass like, woody plant naturally occurring material with
very good potential as reinforcement for cement matrices such as concrete, soil cement
and mortar. It could be used as bar type reinforcement or as fibers. The structural use of
bamboo is perhaps as old as mankind. Its use as reinforcement for cement matrices dates
back to first decade of twentieth century.

The concept of reinforcing the cement matrices to overcome their brittle

characteristics has revolutionalised the construction field, making the cement composites
the foremost among all construction materials of the twentieth century. In its many forms
as bars, mesh and fibers, steel has established it as leading reinforcing material for
cement composites. Unfortunately, acute shortages of steel have been experienced in
several parts of the world from time to time. Also, in most of the developing countries,
steel continues to be costly, scare and often as an imported item. An asbestos fiber is
another popular reinforcing material for cement sheets, pipes and boards. The health
hazards associated with it are now well known and asbestos fibers are expected to be
withdrawn in near future. However, the housing needs particularly of developing
countries are increasing at phenomenal rates due to increasing population and
urbanization associated with industrialization.

Thus, there exists a great need for effective low cost alternative material as
reinforcement for cement composites. Bamboo is one of the alternative materials with a
very potential for reinforcing the cement matrices especially, in developing countries.
Most of these countries are located in tropical and subtropical belt, which is very
conducive to bamboo cultivation. Even if the conventional reinforcing materials are not
scarce, bamboo can be advantageously used as reinforcement in semi-permanent
structures such as housing for the economically weaker sections of the community,
disaster relief structures, military structures and most of the secondary and non load

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bearing, where shorter life of less stringent service requirement would be sufficient and
appropriate.

Bamboo is one of the replenishable, low cost and low energy intensive
construction materials in hut type dwellings in developing countries and is also well
established source of paper pulp. However, the superior strength and mechanical
properties of bamboo and its potential for use as reinforcement only at the beginning of
twentieth century. This was followed by several field applications in China. It is known
that during the Second World War, the American and Japanese armed forces are known
to have used bamboo reinforcement in emergency military structures.

Bamboo reaches its full growth in just a few months and reaches its maximum
mechanical strength in just few years. Its abundance in tropical and subtropical regions
makes it an economically advantageous material. Some of the properties such as a
lightweight, flexibility, and toughness due to its thin walls with discretely distributed
nodes and its good tensile strength (370 N/mm2), make it a good construction material
[Geymayer and Cox, 1970, Ghavami, 1995, 2005]. Bamboo is used as structural material
for scaffolding at construction sites in India, China and other countries as it is a tough,
flexible, light weight and low cost material. In nature when bamboo is covered with
heavy snow, it can bend until it touches to the ground without breaking. This implies that
bamboo has greater flexibility than wood. This provides good ductile properties to
Bamboo as reinforcing material. It was found that for steel it is necessary to spend 50
times more energy than for bamboo. Due to high tensile strength bamboo is an alternative
to steel in tensile loading applications. This is due to the fact that the ratio of tensile
strength to specific weight of bamboo is six times more than that of steel.

Bamboo is giant grass. Bamboo culms are cylindrical shell divided by solid
transversal diaphragms at nodes and have properties such as high strength in the direction
parallel to the fibers, which run longitudinally along the length of the culm, and low
strength in a direction perpendicular to the fibers. The density of fibers in cross section of
a bamboo shell varies with thickness as well as height. Fiber distribution is more uniform
at the base than at the middle or top. This is because bamboo is subjected to maximum
bending stress due to wind at the top portion of the culm [Tommy et. al., 2007]. The

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mechanical properties vary with height and age of the bamboo culm. Research findings
indicate that the strength of bamboo increases with age. The optimum strength value
occurs between 2.5 to 4 years. The strength decreases at a later age. The function of the
nodes is to prevent buckling and they play a role of axial crack arresters [Liese, 1985].
One major problem with bamboo is that it is a living grass, which is subjected to fungi
and insect attacks. Bamboo is more prone to insect attack than other trees and grasses
because of its high content of nutrients. Hence, it becomes necessary to protect the
bamboo to protect it from such attacks. One of the amazing aspects of bamboo is the way
it interacts with the environment. It has been discovered that bamboo can prevent the
pollution by absorbing large amount of nitrogen from waste water and reducing the
amount of carbon dioxide in the air.

Bamboo has been and is being used in a wide variety of applications such as
recreation, defense, housing and construction. In regards to recreation, bamboo has been
used to make a variety of musical instruments. In addition to the fact that bamboo can be
used in the arts, it can also be eaten. The market for bamboo shoots has grown rapidly in
the last few years. In fact, Taiwan exports 50 million dollars worth of shoots that are
eaten worldwide [International Trade of Bamboo and Rattan, 2012].One of the major
applications of bamboo is for construction and housing. It is estimated that one billion
people live in bamboo houses. It is used to make furniture. In India and China, bamboo is
used in construction of temporary suspension bridges. In Tokyo and Hong Kong, it is
used as scaffolding in high rise buildings. Bamboo can also be used in the arts. It can be
fashioned into many shapes leading to artistic freedom as bamboo has been crafted into
weapon, or it could be sharpened to provide food or defense. Even in the US, bamboo is
beginning to gain exposure as flooring, paneling and plywood.

One of the properties that would make bamboo a good substitute to steel in reinforced
concrete is its strength. The tensile strength of bamboo is greater than most timber
products and it is approximately equal to that of mild steel. Bamboo is easily accessible
as it grows in almost every tropical and subtropical region. This lowers the cost of
construction and increases the strength of the buildings that would otherwise be un-
reinforced. Steel does not have insect attack problem but it also needs corrosion

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protection. Bamboo is very light in weight as compared to steel. Due to its low modulus
of elasticity, bamboo can crack and deflect more than steel reinforcement under the same
conditions. These aspects put bamboo on the list of viable construction materials. These
properties, when combined, suggest that bamboo will make a fine addition to the current
selection of materials, but it is necessary that people in general must be made more
familiar with its strengths and weaknesses.

With aforesaid merits of bamboo, particularly for the species Dendrocalamus

strictus, which is the most commonly and easily available in India, the investigations and
experimentations were planned to explore its engineering properties with low cost
treatments to reduce the swelling problem due to water absorption form surrounding
concrete if used as reinforcement. As very less number of attempt were made towards the
mathematical expressions and formulations for analysis and design of BRC flexural
elements, an endeavor was planned for the same, with the known properties from testing
of ingredients, available standards, allowing appropriate margin of safety, referring
parallel philosophies, studying the related practical constraints, keeping social view of
low costing and utilization of local unskilled labours and validation of the developed
expressions by actual testing of flexural members.

3.2 Problem statement

The problem definition of the present work consists of,

 Investigating the different engineering properties of bamboo like, tensile and

compressive strength, water absorption, bond strength in cement matrix etc.
 Developing the procedure for analysis BRC flexural members.
 Developing the philosophy for design for BRC flexural members.

3.3 Objectives

The objective of the study is to develop a theory for design of bamboo reinforced
concrete supported by actual testing of the BRC elements. In particular;

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 i). The study aims to check the feasibility of bamboo and its engineering properties
for its possible use as reinforcement in bamboo reinforced concrete in different
structural elements
ii). The research aims to develop experimental data on engineering properties of
bamboo. Bamboo being natural material, available data showing wide variation
in properties with age, species, location and country. Present study is oriented to
Dendrocalamus strictus, the most common variety in Maharashtra, India.
iii). The research intends to develop the appropriate and cheaper water proofing
treatment for bamboo, to reduce its water absorption and increase the bond
strength..
iv). This study seeks to develop numerical formulation for analyzing BRC flexural
members.

3.4 Methodology

The objectives of the research were achieved as follows,

Initially an experimental program for tensile and compressive strength of the

bamboo specimen was carried out. The specimens as per Indian Standard (IS 6874:1973)
as well as other specimen were tested. All possibilities like location of specimen within
the culms, presence of node within the specimen, shape of the specimen and tensile test
with or without aluminum tabs were conducted. The failure strength with the deformation
was recorded. Specimen showing erratic results for both tension and compression and
cases of slipping of aluminum tabs in tension test were rejected.

Simultaneously, water absorption tests were carried out. The observations were
limited to seven days as the absorption thereafter was almost stopped. The specimen with
node had shown more absorption than that of without node. To bring down the water
absorption, different treatments were tried and dimension variations for all the cases were
recorded. As the study is inclined towards low cost housing elements, it was seen that, the
chosen treatments should be cheaper, with easily available material and should not
demand high skilled labour.

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 Test program for routine tests on all ingredients for concrete was carried out to get
the database for the design of the concrete mix of M20 grade [IS 456:2000, IS
10262:2009]. The cubes of the designed mix were tested for three, seven and twenty eight
days to confirm the target compressive strength.

To test the bond between reinforcing bamboo bar and concrete, pull out test was
carried out on specimens with twenty different treatments on bamboo. Treated bamboo
was used to reduce water absorption. Some of the treatments hamper the bond strength to
great extent, so these treatments were further modified so that, water absorption would be
considerably low maintaining the bond strength. The data collected from this test
program was used for the bamboo reinforced concrete elements.

An exercise to analyze bamboo reinforced concrete composite section by working

stress and limit state method for flexural members was carried out. The expressions for
depth of the neutral axis, lever arm and percentage of bamboo reinforcement and moment
of resistance of the section were derived. A well defined procedure for analysis and
design of bamboo reinforced concrete flexural members was established and validated
with the literature. The flexural members with different percentages of steel bamboo
reinforcement and concrete were cast and tested for flexure and the results were
compared with the established procedure. If required, modifications were be made in the
assumptions, so that the developed theory will be directly applied for design of bamboo
reinforced beam with appropriate margin of serviceability and safety. From the data of
the bending test on beams and slabs related other parameters were also studied.

The flow chart of the activities to be done during this study is presented in Figure3.1

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Figure 3.1 Flow chart of the work

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