Abstract Bamboo is expected to be used as a structural material instead of wood because of its rich resources and environmental friendliness. Rational utilization of bamboo resources is of great significance to promote the sustainable development of bamboo processing industry. However, the suboptimal mechanical properties severely limit its construction application prospects. In order to solve this problem and at the same time maximize the development and high-value utilization of bamboo resources, this study optimized natural bamboo as a high-performance structural material using a green and simple process of high temperature and pressurization–densification. The resulting densified bamboo exhibited excellent physical properties, including density, hardness and dimensional stability. Its tensile strength and tensile modulus were 301 and 233 of that of natural bamboo, respectively. Its flexural strength and flexural modulus were 449 and 605 of that of natural bamboo, respectively. In addition, the bamboo materials treated with high temperature, pressurization treatment and densification also show good anti-rebound characteristics, and the water absorption thickness expansion rate and compression deformation recovery rate were 9.6 (± 0.31) and 5.7 (± 0.35), respectively. The densified bamboo proposed in this study not only provides a green, simple and sustainable method for promoting the high value-added utilization of bamboo, but also the mechanical properties of densified bamboo after processing have higher specific strength than most structural metals and alloys, which can become an important source of engineering structural materials.
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