Experimental investigations and design method on a lightweight bamboo-concrete sandwich panel under axial load

Bamboo is well known as a kind of environment-friendly and sustainable material with superior mechanical properties such as high strength to weight ratio. Generally, it is accepted that bamboo has wide application possibilities in the construction sector. In the present development of the processing technology, engineered bamboo has gradually entered the field of modern structural engineering since the beginning of present century. This paper proposed a novel sandwich panel composed of engineered bamboo face and aerated concrete core. Investigation and analysis of the mechanical properties of this novel engineered bamboo-concrete sandwich panel under axial load was conducted through experiments and theoretical equations. The influence of different factor like face type, thickness of face and core; connection type between the face and the core was discussed as well. The result showed that the bamboo face significantly affected the panel mechanical properties and demonstrated that the sandwich panel proposed in this paper is promising due to its distinguished recorded structural performance.