Characterization of Compression and Tensile Properties of Bamboo Jawa (Gigantochloa Atter) and Bamboo Apus (Gigantochloa Apus) for Application as Soil Reinforcement

Abstract

In any construction design, two things should be taken into account are stability and settlement. In order to achieve target soil stability or soil bearing capacity, earthwork solutions and or ground improvement solutions can be conducted. Some solutions can vary such as using bamboo as a retaining wall or as a foundation. This study aims to determine the compression and tension properties of bamboos which can be used as data for soil reinforcement. Two types of bamboo, bamboo Apus (Gigantochloa Apus) and bamboo Jawa (Gigantochloa Atter) are selected as tested materials. Twenty-four samples from the two bamboos are tested to understand their compressive strength and other thirty for tensile strength. In order to determine the compression (ASTM C39/C39M-09a) and tension (SNI 03-3399-1994) properties of some parts of bamboo, the samples are taken from top, middle, and bottom location. From this experiment, from the two kinds of bamboo, bamboo Apus provides higher strengths (both compressive and tensile strength) than bamboo Jawa. For compressive strength, Bamboo Apus on average reaches 44.36 MPa while bamboo Jawa reaches 25.45 MPa. In tensile strength, on average bamboo Apus reaches183 MPa which is higher than that of bamboo Jawa 140.3 MPa. From this finding, it assures that one type of bamboo can have higher strength than others.