Due to inflation, the price of building materials is constantly on the rise, with experts urging people to use bamboo as a substitute for reinforced steel concrete.
According to Civil Crews, a civil engineering journal, bamboo is not only cheaper but has a higher tensile strength as compared to steel.
"Bamboo is stronger than steel in tension. Steel has a tensile strength of 23,000 pounds per square inch, But it surpasses steel with a noticeable lead at 28,000 pounds per square," the journal states.
The tensile strength can be defined as stress, measured as force per unit area. This can loosely be translated as resistance to breaking or splitting under stress.
Bamboo is more densely packed molecularly than steel making it stronger than steel. Thus it is mainly used as reinforcement.
The report further indicates that steel is much heavier than bamboo compared to the weight-to-strength ratio, making bamboo a better option.
Bamboo has been used extensively in the building industry mainly in the construction of homes, furniture and walls. This is attributed to its accessibility because of its low cost of growth or acquisition.
With the realisation of its tensile strength, experts are trying to adapt it. Bamboo has further proven to be cheaper and flexible because of its hollow nature.
Adopting bamboo as a building material might reduce the need for materials such as steel and plastic which are major emitters of greenhouse gases.
The use of steel has several limitations such as its high prices, pollution to the environment, and soil degradation as compared to bamboo or wood which are beneficial to the environment.
However, the tensile strength of bamboo is not enough to substitute it for steel as it is not suitable for long-term usage in permanent construction due to its lower durability.
Its vulnerability to environmental deterioration and insect invasion. This can easily contribute to a shorter lifespan.
Continuous research on its mechanical and physical qualities is being done to alleviate the various issues and improve the usefulness of bamboo.
"Steel is not irreplaceable. Steel-reinforced concrete is the most common building material in the world, and developing countries use close to 90 per cent of the cement and 80 per cent of steel consumed by the global construction sector," read a report by Future Cities Laboratories.
