{"id":66711,"date":"2019-09-19T07:35:42","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T05:35:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=66711"},"modified":"2019-09-16T13:39:06","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T11:39:06","slug":"bamboo-lights-a-fire-under-australian-construction-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/bamboo-lights-a-fire-under-australian-construction-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Bamboo lights a fire under Australian construction industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"EAIT_BambooFireTesting_26082019A passion for sustainable construction led University of Queensland PhD student Mateo Gutierrez to explore the potential of bamboo as an environmentally friendly local building material.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bamboo is fast becoming a popular choice in Australia for flooring and furniture, but Mr Gutierrez said global construction industries could be transformed if building regulations incorporated bamboo as a structural building material option.<\/p>\n

\u201cBamboo is an excellent building material because it is highly renewable and it has remarkable mechanical properties, it\u2019s light-weight, flexible and strong,\u201d Mr Gutierrez said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fast-growing as it is actually a grass, which increases the turnaround of harvests from timber\u2019s 30 years to three years for bamboo poles \u2013 there are many benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n

After joining the University\u2019s fire safety engineering research group UQ Fire<\/a> in 2016, Mr Gutierrez, a structural engineer by trade, began looking at the performance of bamboo structures when exposed to fire.<\/p>\n

\"EAIT_BambooFireTesting_26082019Global company MOSO International has provided the UQ Fire team with industry support, contributing engineered bamboo beams for laboratory-based fire testing.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring testing, we found that when burning, bamboo creates a char layer that protects the \u00a0inner layers that are not directly exposed to fire, which means it\u2019s relatively hard-wearing in a fire\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike timber, bamboo suffers a reduction in structural integrity at high temperatures, but our goal is to understand how that reduction occurs and how we can predict the failure of load-bearing elements in a building.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe aim to develop design frameworks that can predict how bamboo buildings will fare in fires, and these could be used to inform revisions of the Australian building regulations, and perhaps see bamboo in Australian urban environments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Gutierrez said bamboo still had some limitations as a structural material that needed to be worked through, like weak production chains, a lack of harvesting and engineering technology in the developing countries where it is mostly produced, as well as the misconception that bamboo isn\u2019t as strong or long-lasting as other materials.<\/p>\n

But despite this, the material has already been used around the world to create amazing architectural marvels like Ibuku\u2019s Sharma Springs residence<\/a> in Bali and in the beautiful designs of acclaimed architect Simon Velez,<\/a> in Mr Gutierrez\u2019s home country of Colombia.<\/p>\n

In the face of climate catastrophe, Mr Gutierrez said bamboo offers the construction industry a sustainable solution with a far lower carbon footprint than other options.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith research advancing in the area of bamboo fire safety, bamboo buildings in Brisbane are closer than we might think.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contact<\/h3>\n

Mateo Gutierrez
\nphone: 0416 354 954
\nemail: m.gutierrezgonzalez@uq.edu.au<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A passion for sustainable construction led University of Queensland PhD student Mateo Gutierrez to explore the potential of bamboo as an environmentally friendly local building material. Bamboo is fast becoming a popular choice in Australia for flooring and furniture, but Mr Gutierrez said global construction industries could be transformed if building regulations incorporated bamboo as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[12447,11749],"supplier":[12225,1299],"class_list":["post-66711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-buildingmaterials","tag-construction","supplier-moso-international","supplier-university-of-queensland-australien"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66711"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=66711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}