Axial Compression Behaviors of Columns Fabricated from Bamboo Oriented Strand Boards

Due to the low specific strength of bamboo oriented strand boards compared with the commonly used wooden building materials, reasonable and novel cross-section designs of bamboo columns fabricated from bamboo oriented strand boards as structural members were investigated. An axial compression experiment was carried out on full-scale bamboo columns to characterize the ultimate behaviors under a concentric load. The ultimate bearing capacities of solid, hollow and five-core columns of the same height were not obviously different from each other. The columns with a larger slenderness ratio showed lower ultimate loads and higher axial deflections. The short columns experienced failure due to material crushing, and the long columns experienced a combination of material crushing and inelastic buckling. The empirical equations for predicting the ultimate bearing capacity for wooden columns showed applicability for bamboo columns. Non-linear finite element modeling analyses were carried out to validate the experimental results, and a satisfactory agreement was found in the failure modes and ultimate bearing capacity.