Synergistic effects of bamboo cells during shrinkage process

Abstract

Bamboo utilization is vital to promote low-carbon development. In order to improve the understanding of the shrinking behavior of bamboo, this study was conducted to test the physical changes of cells during the shrinking process using laser confocal in situ real-time testing. The wall thickness, area and displacement of fiber and parenchyma cells were analyzed according to the mainly cell types of bamboo. The wall thickness of fibers and parenchyma cells decreased by 24.70% and 25.37%, respectively. However, the area of parenchyma cells increased by 24.21% caused by the shrinkage of fibers. The displacement of cell was greater than the morphological of cell changes. Therefore, displacement changes were used to simulate intercellular interactions. At the cellular scale, the shrinkage stresses were mainly concentrated in the intercellular layer of fibers, which was probably the initial region for crack formation. The same results were obtained for the macroscopic pictures. This study further refined the cracking mechanism of bamboo at the cellular scale.