POTENCIALITY OF USING BAMBOO AS A REINFORCEMENT IN A CONCRETE BEAM

ABSTRACT The demand of steel is increasing especially in developing countries has make the price rose tremendously. It has make the cost of production of this material rise and at the same time, the milling process had brought critical issues to the environment. This issue has create an interest to the researchers to investigate on new potential material to replace the conventional reinforcement. Based on thorough literature review has shown the potential of bamboo to be replaced steel bar in concrete structure. Thus this research is focusing on bamboo as a replacement to steel reinforcement in concrete beam. In total twelve concrete cubes grade 10 were test under compression test for 7, 14, 21 and 28 days. Moreover, nine beams had been prepared, three for bamboo reinforced concrete beam (BRCB) and three for normal steel reinforced concrete beam and three without reinforcement. SRCB had used T10 steel bar for longitudinal bar and R6 for shear reinforcement. On the other hand, the 10mm diameter of bamboo slats had been use for longitudinal bar and the 5mm thickness of bamboo slats were use as shear reinforcement in BRCB. The beams were test under four-point bending. Based on the test had shown the potential of bamboo to be used as reinforcement. However, it is recommended to use bamboo pole instead of slats as the durability of bamboo might been affected when the properties had been modified. Further investigation is required to improve the strength and the durability of bamboo as reinforcement replacement in concrete beam.