Sustainable Reinforcement in Concrete: Evaluating Bamboo’s Flexural Strength, Cost Benefits, and Material Properties
The high costs and the increased negative effect on the environment when using steel-reinforced concrete prompted the studies on sustainability with bamboo recognized as green steel. Bamboo is a versatile, sustainable, and affordable material, which has great tensile strength. This research assesses the viability of bamboo as a reinforcement candidate in structural concrete based on its mechanical properties and compares it with steel. Tensile and flexural strengths of the reinforced concrete beams enclosed with bamboo or steel and plain concrete respectively were investigated on days 7, 14, and 28. RC beams strengthened with bamboo provided 95% of the control steel's performance in the 7 days but raised to 69% at 7 days later because of moisture lump and bond deterioration. Nevertheless, bamboo is even cheaper than steel and costs 58% less.
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Bamboo Reinforcement, Sustainable Construction, Flexural Strength, Eco-Friendly Materials, Concrete reinforcement, Cost-Effective Building Materials, Bamboo Durability
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(1) Rabia Soomro
Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University, Campus Khairpur, Sindh, Pakistan.
(2) Zain Ul Abideen
Student, Department of Civil Engineering, Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University Campus Khairpur Mir's, Sindh, Pakistan.
(3) Aqta Urf Aqsa
Lecturer, Department of Architecture and Planning, Dawood University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan.