Failure behavior of adhesive bonded interface between steel and bamboo plywood

Bamboo–steel composite structure is constructed with bamboo plywood and cold-formed thin-walled steel, which are bonded by structural adhesive. To investigate the failure behavior of the adhesive bonded interface between bamboo plywood and steel, both experimental and numerical analyses were performed. An adhesive bonded member was designed to observe the failure behavior through the variation of stress distribution on steel sheet under tension. Further analysis of failure behavior was carried out by the numerical model through the stress analysis at the adhesive bonded interfaces. The experimental and numerical analyses revealed the failure mainly occurred at the adhesive bonding interface, caused by the stress concentration at the end of the overlap. The influences of modulus of elasticity of bamboo plywood in the parallel to grain direction and the thickness of steel sheet on the stress distribution at the adhesive bonding interface were investigated, which indicated the stress distribution had a major effect on the load-carrying capacity of the composite structural member. It also suggests enlarging the geometry properly and choosing the bamboo plywood with large modulus of elasticity in the parallel to grain direction are effective to increase the load-carrying capacity.