A new concept of bio-based prestress technology with experimental Proof-of-Concept on Bamboo-Timber composite beams

•A new concept of bio-based prestress technology.•Experimental proof-of-concept on bamboo-timber composite beams.•Industrial level of trial production of prestressed bamboo-timber composite beams.•Thorough lab investigation on the proposed new bio-based composite beams. This paper presents a pioneering experimental proof-of-concept study to validate a novel concept of prestress technology that used only pure bio-based composite materials while achieved consistent prestressed stress distribution within the structure member, and provided in-situ flexibility, improved structural performance, and maximised the rate of utilisation of each material. Industrial level of facilities were used during this development. The prestress is achieved by pressurised/forced lamination of multiple components with different materials and geometrical properties. The prestressing process is activated during the pressure release stage during which the components are interacting with each other, creating different stress statuses that would favour the weaker and adverse the stronger components to maximise the strength exploitation of different materials. Using laminated bamboo and timber as an example pair, twenty-two glulam, non-prestressed and prestressed laminated bamboo-timber composite beams were manufactured, tested, and analysed to provide an in-depth understanding of the structural behaviours of these novel structural members. Failure modes, yielding, ultimate and serviceability limit loads, and corresponding deflections, as well as the histories of strain development at key positions of the specimens were examined. The experimental study confirmed the feasibility, effectiveness and industrial scalability of the proposed technology. The novel concept provides a new approach for developing the prestress technology for bio-based materials, and this experimental study laid the foundation for its future analytical development and numerical studies.