Abstract:

No research has been focused on comparing the moisture dependence of different mechanical properties of bamboo until now. In the present paper, four kinds of mechanical properties of bamboo with four ages were tested both under air-dried (Beijing, MC 8%) and saturated state to explore the different moisture dependence of them. The results show that the four mechanical properties of bamboo exhibited different sensitivity to moisture change. Compressive and shearing strength parallel to gain are most significantly affected by moisture content, then is bending modulus and followed by longitudinal tensile modulus. Furthermore, the sensitivity of the above mechanical properties to moisture change was all reduced with the increase of bamboo ages (from 0.5 year to 4.5 year) but at different speed, among which the decreasing ratio of compressive strength parallel from air-dried to saturated state is only 3.6%, then was shearing strength and tensile modulus followed by bending modulus with a maximum value of 14.77%.

Key words: bamboo, mechanical properties, basic density, 8% moisture content, staurated water content