Experimental Study on Flexural Properties of Side-Pressure Laminated Bamboo Beams

In this paper, two factors of width-to-height ratio and span-to-height ratio are considered and 10 side-pressure laminated bamboo beams are prepared and tested for flexural capacity to study the flexural performance when they are used as structural members. The failure mode, load-displacement curves, and the change rule of cross-section strain with height are obtained through the test. The results demonstrate that the side-pressure laminated bamboo beams have experienced elastic deformation stage, elastic-plastic deformation stage, and failure stage; the midspan deflection of beams with considerable span-to-height ratio is too large to be applied to the ultimate load, and these specimens are regarded at the ultimate limit state; stiffness or deflection should be considered as the control index in the engineering application of the side-pressure laminated bamboo beams; the bearing capacity increases proportionately with the beam width; the average strain of the section basically conforms to the plane section assumption. The experiment proposes a method for calculating the flexural capacity of the side-pressure laminated bamboo beams with nonlinear deformation, and also, the comparison between the test value and the calculated value shows that they agree well.