Experimental Determination of Allowable Stresses for Bamboo Guadua Angustifolia Kunth Structures

The earthquake on 1999 in Armenia city (Colombia) showed the good seismic performance of structures using bamboo guadua as main material but also the mistakes caused by improper techniques of construction and the lack of parameters design for this type of structures. This work presents the experimental methodology used for the determination of allowable stresses for the design of bamboo guadua structures, used in the project "Validation of Guadua Angustifolia as a structural material for design, by the allowable stresses methodology" financed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural development of Colombia (Ministerio de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural de Colombia) and developed by National University of Colombia (Universidad Nacional de Colombia) since the year 2008 when there were no allowable stress design standards for this structures in Colombia. For the determination of the allowable stresses were carried out tests of samples in compression, tension, and shear parallel to the fiber, compression perpendicular of the fiber and bending beams with bamboo guadua from three different areas of Colombia. It was found also the flexural elastic modulus for the material.