FULL SCALE TESTS OF BAMBOO SCAFFOLDS FOR DESIGN DEVELOPMENT AGAINST INSTABILITY

摘要

Bamboo scaffolding is widely used in construction in the South East Asia, in particular, the Southern China and Hong Kong for many decades. However, bamboo scaffolds are generally erected by scaffolding practitioners based on their intuition and experiences without any structural design. In order to standardize the design and erection of bamboo scaffolds and to improve the safety of bamboo scaffolds, a research and development program to promote the effective use of structural bamboo was carried out. As part of the program activities, four full-scale bamboo scaffolds were built and tested to failure in order to examine the structural behaviour of bamboo scaffolds in site condition. The load carrying capacities of these bamboo scaffolds with different member configurations and lateral restraint arrangements were assessed and compared against practical load requirements and support conditions. Details of the full-scale tests and their test results are presented in this paper.