Construction and structural performances of laminated bamboo arches

Abstract

Laminated bamboo arches (LBAs) were designed based on bamboo fiber reinforced composite materials. A simple and feasible technique was proposed to manufacture the LBAs. To investigate the bending mechanical properties of the LBAs, three-point bending experiments were carried out on seven groups of LBAs with different rise-span ratios (RSRs) and thickness-span ratios (TSRs). The effects of the RSR and the TSR on the bending properties of the LBAs were investigated. Most of the LBAs have flexural fail mode. Fiber fracture and delamination appear at the vault firstly and finally one of the waist, forming a four-joint mechanism. The experimental results show that when the RSR is 0.5 and the TSR is 0.05, the LBA has the best bending resistance in this research. Three structural models were proposed to predict the failure of the LBAs, and the flexural dominant failure model suggests the most consistent results with the experiments.