NewsResearch on Bamboo for Construction & Engineering
Prevalence of “Bamboo” in Peer-Reviewed Journals
Number of papers published in the last 40 years. Note: 2018 list is yet to be completed
- Carried out by Prof. Kent A. Harries, Senior Editor, Construction and Building Materials and INBAR Construction Task Force member. It is encouraging to see the development of bamboo-related scientific research emerging worldwide. An important measure of research output are papers appearing in indexed journals.
On 1 March 2018, the following search was run on Scopus: “bamboo” in title, abstract or keywords. This search was limited to the subject area “engineering”; that is: (TITLE-ABS-KEY ( bamboo ) AND ( LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “ENGI” ))
Distribution of “bamboo engineering” papers in JCBM
Region of origin of the 3780 papers reported
The search returned 3780 papers published between 1923 and 2018. Of the 3780 papers reported, 84% are published in English, 11%in Chinese and the rest in other languages.
The Elsevier journal Construction and Building Materials (JCBM) welcomes submissions related to bamboo materials for construction. Submissions should be directed to Senior Editor Kent Harries when possible.
Construction and Building Materials is the top rated journal in “Civil Engineering” according to Google Scholar
US-National Science Foundation Project: Collaborative Research: Full-culm Bamboo as a Full-fledged Engineering Material
Status: Ongoing
The primary objective of this research is to establish the framework and tools required to standardize the evaluation of the material and mechanical properties of full-culm bamboo. This research will consolidate and significantly extend the extant body of knowledge and establish materials-and mechanics-based constitutive models for the behaviour of full-culm bamboo.
Three representations of bamboo behaviour will be developed forming the framework and represent the tools required to evaluate the material and mechanical properties of bamboo for engineered applications:
- A detailed analytical model will be developed informed by innovative experimental methods focused on establishing through-wall and along-culm variation of fundamental mechanical properties (see Figure).
- Surrogate representation of difficult-to-obtain engineering properties suitable for field test methods. The approach taken will leverage the analytical platform developed in order to develop both empirical and mechanics-based representations of engineering design properties that may be obtained from practical field tests.
- A new framework for modelling uncertainty in bamboo material and mechanical properties will enable reliable calibration of design equations. The approach proposed to investigate this uncertainty includes the stochastic generation of probability spatial distributions of mechanical properties implemented into the developed analytical model.
[PI: Kent A. Harries, University of Pittsburgh, USA and INBAR Construction Task Force member
Co-PI: Ian Nettleship, University of Pittsburgh, USA
PI: Christopher Papadopoulos, the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, PR
Additional collaborator: John Brigham, University of Durham, UK]
Project duration: August 2016 to August 2019
