Experimental Study on Flexural Properties of Side-Pressure Laminated Bamboo Beams

In this paper, two factors of width‐to‐height ratio and span‐to‐height ratio are considered and 10 side‐pressure laminated bamboo beams are prepared and tested for flexural capacity to study the flexural performance when they are used as structural members. The failure mode, load‐displacement curves, and the change rule of cross‐section strain with height are obtained through the test. The results demonstrate that the side‐pressure laminated bamboo beams have experienced elastic deformation stage, elastic‐plastic deformation stage, and failure stage; the midspan deflection of beams with considerable span‐to‐height ratio is too large to be applied to the ultimate load, and these specimens are regarded at the ultimate limit state; stiffness or deflection should be considered as the control index in the engineering application of the side‐pressure laminated bamboo beams; the bearing capacity increases proportionately with the beam width; the average strain of the section basically conforms to the plane section assumption. The experiment proposes a method for calculating the flexural capacity of the side‐pressure laminated bamboo beams with nonlinear deformation, and also, the comparison between the test value and the calculated value shows that they agree well.