Experimental investigation of bamboo-concrete composite beams with threaded reinforcement connections

A novel bamboo-concrete composite structure with threaded reinforcement connections is presented. Experimental investigations on the shear behavior of the connectors and the flexural performance of the bamboo-concrete composite beams were carried out. The results indicate that the load-slip behavior of the shear connection with threaded reinforcement exhibits good ductility and that its failure mode is ductile failure. The threaded reinforcement provides an efficient connection before the initial shear failure. The load-displacement curves of the bamboo-concrete composite beams are close to those of the full composite structure, and the midspan displacement is greatly reduced under the same load compared with that of the contrast bamboo beams. The loads P-L(/250) and P-L/300, corresponding to the midspan deflections of L/250 and L/300 (L is the span of the beams) of the composite beams, increase by averages of 3.36 times and 3.71 times, respectively, compared to those of the contrast bamboo beams. The load-bearing performance of the beams in the service state is greatly improved. Based on the equivalent cross-sectional stiffness calculated using the gamma-method with a reduction of 0.80, the calculated results of the displacement are in good agreement with the test results.