Determination of safety factors for structural bamboo design applications

Use of bamboo as a construction material has world-wide potential given it is lightweight, highly-renewable, and fast-growing. The pitfall lies largely in the variability of the material properties reported by numerous investigators. Previous research has sought to correlate various material properties to external factors but results are conflicting. This paper applies the same approaches previously applied to other structural materials using U.S. approved standards. It outlines the significance of a common set of material properties with the goal of identifying the necessary safety factors designers can incorporate when using bamboo to ensure a given level of reliability and an acceptable failure rate. These results when combined with international building codes for bamboo can allow for greater structural application of bamboo in architectural designs.