Flammability Assessment of GluBam with Cone-Calorimeter Tests
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 33, Issue 5
Abstract
Bamboo is increasingly recognized for its potential as an environmentally friendly and sustainable building material, but the knowledge of its combustion properties and the safety of bamboo building construction are very limited. In this study, experiments were conducted to obtain the combustion behaviors of glue-laminated bamboo (GluBam or glubam) boards by using a cone calorimeter. The tests were carried out at five levels of heat flux: 15, 25, 35, 50, and . The measured results are compared with those of fir plywood. Glubam generally behaves better than plywood under the same heat flux. A further comparison of the investigation in this study with some measured results in published papers indicates that glubam is less flammable than the laminated bamboo materials and several wood species. The fire safety assessment of glubam is also studied based on fire hazard indices, the charring rate, and fire endurance time. From flammability considerations, glubam has the potential as a substitute for untreated plywood in structural and lining applications and should further be evaluated according to building codes to define its end-use.
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Data Availability Statement
All data and models generated or used during this study are available from the corresponding author by request.
Acknowledgments
The research reported in the paper was conducted at the MOE Key Laboratory of Building Safety and Energy Efficiency at Hunan University. The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project Nos. 50938002 and 51378200), the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team Project (Project No. IRT0619), and the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-11-0123).
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Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 33 • Issue 5 • May 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 9, 2020
Accepted: Sep 15, 2020
Published online: Feb 22, 2021
Published in print: May 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Jul 22, 2021
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