Design and Construction of Modern Bamboo Bridges
Publication: Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 15, Issue 5
Abstract
The writers are conducting a comprehensive research program, with the goal to develop modern bamboo structures for buildings and bridges. This paper reports the design, construction, and testing of modern bamboo bridges. Laminated bamboo girders or glubam were developed and verified for satisfactory mechanical performance through full-scale testing. It was demonstrated that the laminated bamboo girders have satisfactory stiffness and load carrying capacity. The use of carbon fiber-reinforced plastics can further enhance the stiffness and capacity of the bamboo girders. Based on the test results and analysis, a 10-m long single lane roadway bridge was designed and constructed, which was the first of its kind in the world. The field tests were carried out using an over loaded two-axel truck with a total weight of 8.6 t which exceeded the given design truckload of 8.0 t. The bridge performed satisfactorily with the midspan deflection corresponding to the critical service loading condition being much smaller than the code required limit. Computer simulation of the field tests shows that the trend of the measured midspan deflection can be reasonably well captured. Examples of other bridge applications are also reported in this paper.
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Acknowledgments
The research described in this paper was sponsored by the Institute of Bamboo, Timber, and Composite Structures (IBTCS) of the Hunan University, under the support of the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team Project by the Ministry of Education of China (Project No. UNSPECIFIEDIRT0619), and the NSFC key program (Project No. NSFC50938002). The construction of the 10-m long modern bamboo roadway bridge was funded by the Agriculture Development Office, Leiyang City, Hunan Province, China under the direction of Mr. Zhou, Bingya. The first writer was partially sponsored by the University of Southern California. The sponsors and collaborators are warmly appreciated. The writers would also like to thank the three unanimous reviewers whose constructive and critical review comments significantly helped the writers to enhance the final paper.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 15 • Issue 5 • September 2010
Pages: 533 - 541
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Oct 7, 2008
Accepted: Nov 13, 2009
Published online: Nov 21, 2009
Published in print: Sep 2010
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