An innovative digital workflow to design, build and manage bamboo structures

Abstract

At current rates, the building industry is the major contributor to gas emissions and energy consumption in the world, placing unprecedented pressure to find alternative and sustainable construction materials, particularly in regions where urbanization and population growth are expected to rise. Coincidentally, bamboo culms are a sustainable and abundant resource with the potential to be used as a structural element in those regions, however, their organic nature and inherent incompatibility with modern design and construction procedures have hampered their formal utilization. This article presents the details of an innovative workflow based on the philosophy that the quality and reliability of bamboo structures can be computationally managed through the digitization of individual structural bamboo elements. The workflow relies on reverse-engineering processes that integrate and make bamboo culms compatible with modern data-management platforms such as Building Information Modelling. A case study based on a reconstruction project of bamboo houses in Lombok, Indonesia is presented to illustrate the proposed workflow. This work showed that digitization and management are not just to represent shapes and information regarding bamboo culms through computer software, but can also control the quality, sustainability, and structural behavior of a bamboo structure during its entire service life.

A Review on Flexural Properties of Wood-Plastic Composites

“…Biomass materials can replace traditional building materials for structural design and construction to a certain extent [ 26 , 27 ]. The mechanical properties of WPC are affected by the interfacial bonding force; significant research would be required to improve the interfacial bonding force to improve the mechanical properties of WPC.…”

Engineering and Design for Sustainable Construction: A Bibliometric Analysis of Current Status and Future Trends

“…He published a notable number of papers on innovative technologies like integrating BIM and IoT for sustainable engineering, sustainability assessment, bamboo structures, off-site constructions, etc. [69][70][71][72][73][74]. Liu Y. started publishing in 2013, and his paper was mainly cited in 2021.…”

A review on mechanical behavior of laminated bamboo lumber connections

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