Experimental investigation on the post-fire mechanical properties and charring rate of inorganic-bonded bamboo composite exposed to fire

The fire resistance remains a challenging topic for engineered wood and bamboo structures due to the combustibility of wood and bamboo and the usage of organic adhesives, which are temperature-sensitive substance in fire. As an alternative solution, this paper investigated a novel bamboo-based composite prepared with magnesium oxysulfide inorganic adhesive (inorganic-bonded bamboo composite, InorgBam), and the fire tests were carried out to investigate the post-fire mechanical properties and charring behavior of InorgBam. The reduction effect of fire exposure on compressive or tensile strength parallel-to-grain was experimentally studied. The effects of fire exposure surface numbers, grain direction, geometric dimension and exposure time on charring rate were discussed. Results showed that the InorgBam can be maintained the post-fire strength under compressive or tensile loads parallel to grain without significant degradation when the exposure temperature below 250 °C. The temperature of the char front was determined to be approximate 350°C by using an interpolation method. The charring rate was mainly dominated by the exposure time and decreases nonlinearly with the increase of exposure time, and the charring rate with multi-sided fire exposure was approximately 1.1 times of that exposed to one-sided fire. Finally, a nonlinear model was proposed to predict the charring rate of InorgBam material, which provides a basic reference for understanding the fire resistance of InorgBam material exposed to fire.