The Effect of Bamboo Water Content on The Tensile Strength of Bamboo

In today’s world of construction, many use steel as reinforcement for reinforced concrete, where steel is one of the most widely produced materials to meet infrastructure needs. The use of steel is so rapid but has several drawbacks such as a less economical price and not environmentally friendly. In addition, the characteristics of bamboo plant materials that can be an alternative, where bamboo has a fiber that is good enough to withstand the same tensile strength as steel reinforcement that works in concrete construction. However, some things that must be considered are the air content which is quite influential on the tensile strength. This research focuses on the effect of water content in bamboo on the tensile strength of bamboo itself. The bamboo material used is Buluhpring bamboo from the Gowa Region, the bamboo is dried and tested for its characteristics. From the results of the water content test, the average water content was 34.44% on the bottom of bamboo, 25.89% on the middle bamboo and 14.89% on the upper bamboo where the Upper segment of bamboo have met ISO 22157 standards. -01-2004. The bamboo material was also tested for tensile strength of 277.54 Mpa at the bottom, 308.51 Mpa at the middle and 357.10 Mpa at the top. From the test results, it can be seen that the relationship between the water content of bamboo and the tensile strength of bamboo is that the smaller the water content contained in the bamboo, the higher the tensile strength of the bamboo material accepted by bamboo.