PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF BAMBOO REINFORCED CONCRETE BEAM

Traditionally steel is used as a reinforcement in concrete. But because of cost and availability, replacement of steel with some other suitable materials as reinforcement is now a major concern. Though bamboo has been used as a construction material, especially in developing country, until today its use as reinforcement in concrete is very limited due to various uncertainties. Since bamboo is a natural, cheap and also readily available material, it can be a substitute of steel in reinforcing of concrete. In this paper, aptness of bamboo as reinforcement in concrete will be evaluated. To assess this, tensile strength test of bamboo having three and five nodes are performed. I m bamboo sticks of varying cross sections are used in this test. Also flexural strength test of bamboo reinforced beam is done to characterize the performance of bamboo as reinforcement. Singly and double bamboo reinforced beams of 750 mm length having 150 mm width and depth are compared with plain concrete beam to carry out in this test