Effect of temperature on axial compressive mechanical properties of bamboo

Abstract

To study the axial compressive mechanical properties of bamboo in different temperatures (-60 °C ∼200 °C, 11 temperatures), 264 specimens were designed for experimental research considering the influence of bamboo node and loading direction. This study summarized the failure modes of bamboo under compression load, and the effect of bamboo node and load direction on the compressive strength of bamboo was analyzed. The test results showed that when the temperature rose from −60 °C to 200 °C, the compressive strength of bamboo gradually decreased. The mechanism that the compressive strength of bamboo would decrease under high temperature is that the cell wall of bamboo would become thinner under such environment (>100 °C) and eventually lead to the vanishment of the layered structure of the cell wall, thus losing the bearing capacity. Under any temperatures, the compressive strength of bamboo parallel to fibres was always higher than that perpendicular to fibres. In general, the effect of bamboo node on the compressive strength of bamboo parallel to fibres is more obvious than that of bamboo perpendicular to fibres. An estimation formula was proposed for calculating the compressive strength bamboo under different temperatures.