Investigating the Damaging Effects of the Cyclic Discharge in the Uni-Axial Compression of Raphia vinifera L. Arecacea

Document pages: 11 pages

Abstract: The bamboo stem, when mature 5 to 6 years, serves as a building materialfor modest houses and its marrow as packaging purposes. One of the strainsrelated to the uses of bamboo stem is most often the compression towards theaxial direction. The phenomenon of damage is very often observed during suchloading. The present study on raffia aims to analyze this phenomenon throughcyclical stresses as usual. From the results obtained, it was observed in thestress-strain plane, that the area of the hysteresisloops and the residual strain evolve with two parameters: the number of cyclesand the stress peaks. The study of energy dissipation has shown that it evolvesaccording to an exponential law as a function of the number of cycles. Thedistribution of the energy rate along a stem shows that the samples from thezone close to the base store twice (0.0412 MJ m3) more energy thanthe samples taken from the top of the foliage (0.019 MJ m3).