Novel engineered wood and bamboo composites for structural applications: State-of-art of manufacturing technology and mechanical performance evaluation

Both wood and bamboo are renewable anisotropic materials with a long application history in human society. Engineered wood or bamboo aiming to mitigate the variability of the natural material can provide better material properties and structural performance, compared to original sawn lumber or raw bamboo. In this paper, a state-of-the-art review was conducted on three types of novel engineered wood composites, namely fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) reinforced glulam, cross-laminated timber (CLT), and wood scrimber, as well as three types of novel engineered bamboo composites, namely laminated bamboo lumber (LBL), glued-laminated bamboo (glubam), and bamboo scrimber, with particular attentions to their manufacturing technologies, modeling approaches, and mechanical properties. Then, for these novel engineered wood/bamboo composites, a comprehensive comparison was conducted on their mechanical properties and on their densities. Finally, several cases of structural applications were respectively illustrated, in which these aforementioned engineered wood/bamboo composites were adopted as main building materials. Potentials of applying these engineered wood/bamboo composites for structures were confirmed, and their possible existing drawbacks were also discussed.