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

Abstract

The bamboo stem, when mature 5 to 6 years, serves as a building material for modest houses and its marrow as packaging purposes. One of the strains related to the uses of bamboo stem is most often the compression towards the axial direction. The phenomenon of damage is very often observed during such loading. The present study on raffia aims to analyze this phenomenon through cyclical stresses as usual. From the results obtained, it was observed in the stress-strain plane, that the area of the hysteresis loops and the residual strain evolve with two parameters: the number of cycles and the stress peaks. The study of energy dissipation has shown that it evolves according to an exponential law as a function of the number of cycles. The distribution of the energy rate along a stem shows that the samples from the zone close to the base store twice (0.0412 MJ/m3) more energy than the samples taken from the top of the foliage (0.019 MJ/m3).