Can bamboo replace reinforced concrete to build a house? Of course can! If you visit the world expo 2010 Shanghai China, you will find two pavilions with bamboo structure. One is the smallest pavilion in the Shanghai expo park – “home of German and Chinese colleagues” pavilion, which is an environmentally friendly two-story building with a laminated all-bamboo structure. The other is the India pavilion, which covers more than 4,000 square meters and is also made of bamboo. The India pavilion is 18 meters high, with a large circular dome spanning 36 meters. The dome and girder alone used 40 tons of bamboo.
In fact, before that, the international bamboo and rattan organization cooperated with the research group of professor xiao yan in the school of civil engineering of hunan university, and adopted the modern bamboo structure building and glue bamboo patent technology with independent intellectual property rights of professor xiao yan’s research group. One is built in hunan university, two floors above and below, with a floor area of 250 square meters and an area of 160 square meters. The other two were built by CAI lun in purple bamboo park in Beijing and hunan leiyang bamboo park as the cheung kong scholars distinguished professor of Mr. Thomas, the hunan university, dean of the school of civil engineering, both at the university of southern California civil department and engineering and seismic research center director, director of the laboratory, doctoral supervisor, 985 science and technology innovation platform, chief scientist, national “one thousand project” scholar, etc., has published more than 100, including more than 50 paper SCI retrieval.
What materials will replace the traditional steel and cement to build the house? It is the problem that xiao yan thinks for years. Wood is good, but not sustainable. So he came up with bamboo, which is not only an ideal building material, but also four times more capable of absorbing carbon dioxide than eucalyptus. China is the main bamboo producing area in the world. Bamboo has been used in China for thousands of years. Bamboo, which is evergreen, fast growing and renewable, has replaced wood and other high-energy consuming raw materials in many fields and is known as “plant reinforcing steel”. According to statistics, 70 hectares of bamboo forest can provide the bamboo needed to build 1000 original bamboo structure houses every year. But if the houses were made of natural wood, they would destroy 600 hectares of virgin forest.
Professor xiao yan said that the construction time of bamboo structure houses is short and it is basically unaffected by the climate. The structural components can be made on site or prefabricated in factories and then transported to the site for installation. It takes 6 to 10 months to build the same building with a rough brick and concrete structure, while the bamboo structure is completed by 8 workers within 100 working days. The construction speed is fast and the labor intensity of the workers is low. It is worth mentioning that the bamboo structure of the housing rate is 8 to 10 percent higher than the brick structure of housing. Professor xiao yan said that the bamboo structure has good toughness and seismic performance. Even if the whole structure is deformed under a strong earthquake, it will not fall apart or collapse. In addition, bamboo heat conduction speed is slow, good insulation, can greatly reduce residential energy consumption.
Professor xiao yan said that the bamboo structure model house of hunan university costs about 950 yuan per square meter, and the total construction cost of the bamboo structure villa model house in Beijing zizhuyuan park can also be controlled at 1600 yuan per square meter. Related technology has obtained and applied for more than 10 national patents. Professor xiao yan can not only build houses with bamboo, but also build Bridges with bamboo. In 2007, professor Thomas led the team in hunan leiyang guide ZiXiang leiyang invertors village built on bamboo bridge, was opened to traffic by the end of, become the world’s first traffic load trucks of the modern bamboo bridge structure, bridge 10 meters long and is composed of 9 bamboo beam, design traffic load of 8 tons, used for at least 20 to 30 years since the bridge opened to traffic in good condition, by the United States “a new era of science and technology magazine 2008 annual global best project innovation, following the” water cube “in China and won the international projects.
Professor xiao yan also led the research team to build a bamboo footbridge on the campus of hunan university, with a span of 5 meters and a width of 1.5 meters. Recently, professor xiao yan’s research group built two more pedestrian landscape bamboo Bridges of 40 meters and 20 meters in dongguan vanke science and technology park.
Professor xiao yan said that the bamboo footbridge can also be changed according to the needs of the form, such as arch bridge, suspension bridge, and according to the requirements of the construction site to change the structure layout and details, strong adaptability. After nearly four years of hard work, professor xiao yan’s system of modern bamboo houses and bamboo Bridges has been established. It was the returnee scholar’s dream to build more bamboo houses for the Chinese people. Professor xiao said that the research group will complete the preparation of relevant technical standards under the support of key projects funded by the national natural science foundation of China, and conduct in-depth research on the long-term performance, comprehensive protection performance and other key technologies of bamboo structure to provide scientific and technological support for industrialization.
