Determinant of Critical Distance of Bolt on Bamboo Connection

Bamboo is a construction material that has great potential to be utilized as structural material on building construction. Bamboo available in variety length and high strength-weight ratio that make it ideal to be used as main structural component of buildings, such as column, beam, floor, partitions or trusses structural elements. High strength bamboo material can not be fully utilized due to the constraints in the connection system. The connection system adopted in joining bamboo elements on bamboo construction significantly influences the strength as well as behavior of the structure. The existence of nodes at the end of bamboo culms may improve the strength of connection. In practice, however, it is nearly impossible to have all bamboo element with nodes at the end of bamboo culms. Therefore in design of strength bamboo connection should be based on condition of end bamboo culms without nodes. In this research, analytical method considering two strength criterions is verified with result from experimental work. Results of research show that shear strength is the smallest strength among others. As bolt is used as connector in bamboo connections, shear strength commonly serves as critical criterion that determines the connection strength. This paper presents the result of study aiming at determination of minimum distance of bolt to the end of bamboo culms without node. Tests conducted by giving tensile force on the bolt with certain distance based on the analysis of shear strength and bearing strength of bamboo. The results showed that the critical distance of bolt to end of bamboo culms without node is 4-5 times the diameter of bamboo. Two main criterion of connection failure, namely shear and bearing failures are considered.