Bolted Bamboo Joints Reinforced with Fibers

Bamboo in Indonesia grows rapidly and is ready to be used after three to five years of planting. Bamboo has a pipe-like cross-section and excellent mechanical properties, especially tensile and compressive strength with a specific gravity varies from 0.55 to 0.75. Thus bamboo is now becoming an important sustainable construction material, especially in rural areas. One crucial issue in bamboo construction is the connection system where failure of the connection develops at low level of loading associated with bamboo splitting. In this study, seventeen single-bolted bamboo joints in total were prepared. Four joints are loaded in perpendicular loading direction, and the rest are loaded in parallel loading direction or overlap connections. These joints were a double-shear configuration of bamboo Wulung (Gigantochloa atroviolacea) connected by 12-mm bolts and were tested under a quasi-static load. Some of them were reinforced with natural fiber (Indonesian name, “ijuk”) and fiber reinforced plastic (FRP). The results showed that a significant increase of joint slip modulus and load carrying capacity was found in the joints reinforced with FRP. The wrapping effect caused by FRP sheets successfully postpones the bamboo splitting failure, while in the case of joints reinforced with natural fiber ijuk, this increase is negligible.