Suitability of Bamboo for Construction and Environmental Preservation

Abstract

Trees are increasingly cut for fuel, furniture, construction and agriculture. Uganda's an annual wood consumption is about 26 billion tonnes and is estimated to be over 60 billion tonnes by 2025. Woody biomass caters for 97% of Uganda's energy needs. Part of the solution could be tree planting, but one of the fastest growing trees in the country; Eucalyptus, takes 10 years to mature and takes up a lot of water and nutrients from the soil, worsening environmental degradation. Bamboo takes only 4 years to mature. It produces greater biomass and 30% more oxygen than a hard wood forest on the same area while improving water sheds, prevent-ing erosion, restoring and removing toxins from contaminated soils. This paper presents in-vestigation into the mechanical properties of Bamboo that make it suitable for construction. Bamboo stems were cut and tested. The average compressive, bending and shear strength of Bamboo was found to be greater than those of unreinforced concrete, soft and hard wood tim-ber. It was shown that Bamboo is suitable for use as struts and beams in construction. It is also suitable for use as furniture and firewood. Therefore it's planting and use should be en-couraged for environmental sustainability.

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability, Bamboo, Strength, construction.

Journal of Civil Engineering Research and Practice Vol. 5 (1) 2008: pp. 43-51