EXPERIMENTAL DEMONSTRATION OF THE POOR STRUCTURAL PERFORMANCE OF BAMBOO-REINFORCED CONCRETE FLEXURAL MEMBERS

Bamboo-reinforced concrete is an ill-advised concept. Despite this, many researchers continue to investigate the replacement of steel with bamboo as reinforcement in concrete flexural members. This study provides a side-by-side comparison of the flexural behaviour of plain unreinforced concrete, steel reinforced concrete and two variations of bamboo-reinforced concrete comparable to the steel reinforced beam tested. As expected, the bamboo-reinforced concrete performs marginally better than unreinforced concrete but is entirely unable to approach the performance of under-reinforced steel-reinforced concrete. This paper underscores the fact that bamboo-reinforced concrete is not only ill-advised, but may indeed be structurally dangerous.