Assessment of the drying behaviour of young and mature Bambusa vulgaris from Ghana

Abstract

This study assessed the drying behaviour of young and mature Bambusa vulgaris culms and evaluated their utilisation potential. Two and four-year old Bambusa vulgaris culms were harvested and prepared to the required length of 21 internodes. The first seven internodes were taken as the bottom, the second seven were taken as middle and the last seven internodes were taken as the top. The study used samples from the bottom and top. Physical properties, including basic density and moisture content, were determined in accordance with ISO 13061–2 (ISO 2014) and EN 13183–1 (EN 2002), respectively, while shrinkage properties (radial, tangential, longitudinal and volumetric) were determined following established procedures. For the bottom and top portions of the mature bamboo after 18 days of drying, radial shrinkage values were 3.31% and 5.01%, tangential values were 4.95% and 5.78%, and longitudinal values were 0.28% and 0.35%, respectively. For the bottom and top portion of two-year-old culms, the values were 15.0% and 18.6% for radial shrinkage, 20.5% and 25.8% for tangential shrinkage and 0.46% and 0.47% for longitudinal shrinkage, respectively. The tangential shrinkage values were higher than the radial and longitudinal shrinkage values. The moisture content of the bottom part of the mature bamboo culm after 3 and 18 days of drying were 31.4% and 12.2%, while the young culms had values of 53.5% and 27.8%, respectively. Mature bamboo culms had better drying behaviour than young culms. Consequently, mature bamboo culms are more suitable for use in engineered composite materials.