Experimental Study of Twin Bamboo Concrete Composite Column under Laterally Restrained Pure Axial Loading

Bamboo has a huge potential to be used under affordable housing. The beauty about bamboo is that it has an inherent negative carbon foot print in its natural round form. This ability can aid in developing a nearly zero carbon foot print construction using round bamboo. Also, it has been observed in India that the traditional constructions of houses are with bamboo used as a load distributor and not as a main load bearing element. The key to achieve higher bending strength, required for main load bearing elements, is through enhancing the second moment of area to achieve desired bending strength. This is achieved using a new innovative jointing technology i.e. Haritha IITD Bamcrete Technology (HIB) for developing twin bamboo columns as main load bearing elements to develop bamcrete columns (bamboo concrete composite columns). The present study reports the performance of a twin bamboo column developed using HIB technology & tested to 32 kN load under pure axial loading, with lateral restrains, developing compressive stress of 14 MPa in bamboo (Dendrocalamus strictus).