Luis Felipe López

• Civil Engineering + MSc Structural Engineering
• Head of Department at Base Bahay Foundation Inc.

Composite bamboo shear walls (CBSW) are modern engineered vernacular-improved shear walls, that build upon the traditional Latin American wattle-and-daub construction technique known as bahareque, and engineer it using modern materials and construction techniques. CBSWs consist of a frame made of timber and/or large diameter bamboo, upon which a ma...

Bamboo is native to many highly seismic areas across the Global South, including South and Central America and parts of South and Eastern Asia. Bamboo buildings are often described as performing well in earthquakes, based principally on observations from real events, which has led to many bamboo structures being labelled "seismically-resistant", th...

Bamboo is considered a sustainable construction material due to its ability to grow quickly and its mechanical properties that are comparable to timber. Contributing to the current effort to establish structural bamboo standards in the National Structural Code of the Philippines (NSCP), this study establishes the characteristic compressive strength...

Bamboo is considered a sustainable construction material due to its ability to grow quickly and its mechanical properties that are comparable to timber. Contributing to the current effort to establish the structural bamboo standards in the National Structural Code of the Philippines (NSCP), this study establishes the characteristic compressive stre...

The Philippines faces a significant shortage of affordable housing, and with the growing urgency brought by climate change, there is a pressing need for more sustainable and affordable building solutions. One promising option is cement bamboo frame buildings, which blend traditional bamboo building methods with modern materials. This approach is al...

Composite bamboo shear walls (CBSW) are modern engineered vernacular-improved shear walls, that take the traditional Latin American wattle-and-daub known as bahareque, and engineer it, using modern materials and construction techniques. CBSWs consist of a frame made of timber and/or large diameter bamboo, upon which a matrix of cane, small diameter...

The adoption of bamboo as an alternative to traditional building materials in the Philippines is hampered due to its non-inclusion in the local structural code. Given the inherent variability in the mechanical properties of bamboo, determining its characteristic strength is crucial in the development of the local bamboo structural code. The literat...

Bamboo is a sustainable and cost-effective alternative to traditional construction materials. Despite the fact that three species are well known for structural applications, namely Dendrocalamus asper, Gigantochloa scortechinii, and Gigantochloa levis, the scientific data for their mechanical characterization is scarcely available and widely disper...

Natural fiber reinforcement in cementitious matrices is being explored to provide an environment-friendly solution for lowering the overall carbon footprint of construction materials while giving the matrix much-needed tensile strength. Short bamboo fibers extracted from Bambusa blumeana or Kawayan tinik using 5% sodium hydroxide solution and treat...

This study is aimed to examine which configurations of mortar covering give the best fire protection for the bamboo-plaster wall system. The research is done in two stages, first is the non-standardized pre-test stage which results will become the basis for determining the specimen specification. In the second stage, the specimen with the best fire...

The provision of sustainable housing solutions is one of the main challenges in emerging economy countries. Furthermore, it is clear that a sustainable solution should be based on renewable bio-based materials. Scientific and practical evidence clearly suggests that the use of bamboo in the provision of housing solutions provides communities with b...

Bamboo has traditionally been used as a construction material for centuries. In the past two decades, innovation, technology development, deployment, and demonstration, expanded the use of bamboo as a conventional construction material for both round bamboo and engineered bamboo structures. Bamboo is getting widely accepted and/or mainstream, and t...

Design aids in the form of load tables or span tables are well known to engineers and are commonly used in timber and steel design. Such tables reduce the need for repetitive calculation and allow for easy ‘what-if’ queries during design. They also permit rapid communication of minimum design requirements. This paper demonstrates an approach for de...

ISO 19624:2018 is the world’s first international bamboo grading standard. It contains few prescriptive clauses and is mostly written as a recipe for a national grading standard. This paper reports the initial phases of the implementation of this standard in the context of a production plant (Kawayan Collective) exploiting Bambusa blumeana harveste...

The moisture content of bamboo is critical to its treatment and use. However, determining the moisture through oven drying is impractical for most applications. Moisture meters however are able to estimate the moisture content almost instantaneously. In this study, two moisture meters, Benetech GM610 and Brookhuis FMC were calibrated for two bamboo...

Durability of bamboo is one of the most important aspects to consider when designing and building with this nature-based material. Durable structures with bamboo are resilient, cost-effective and have a lower whole life-cycle environmental impact. This paper firstly reviews the main causes of decay of bamboo: beetle, termite and fungal, and then di...

In November 2021, a symposium was held to identify knowledge gaps, and research needs and priorities in the bamboo community. Participants who were asked to complete a post-symposium survey on research gaps, needs and priorities. Both rank-order and open-ended questions were asked covering the broad areas of i) determination of material properties,...

Natural fibers are being explored nowadays to provide tensile strength needed in cementitious matrices. To give better bondage between the fibers and the matrices, surface enhancements for natural fibers can be induced through chemical treatments. In the current study, fibers are extracted from Bambusa Blumeana , an abundant local species of bamboo...

The provision of sustainable housing solutions is one of the main challenges in emerging economy countries. Furthermore, it is clear that a sustainable solution should be based on renewable bio-based materials. The scientific and practical evidence clearly suggests that the use of bamboo in the provision of housing solutions not only brings environ...

There are limited published studies related to the mechanical properties of bamboo species in the Philippines. In this study, the shear strength properties of some economically viable bamboo species in the Philippines were properly characterized based on 220 shear test results. The rationales of selecting this mechanical property are the following:...

The mechanical properties of a structural material such as flexure, shear, and compressive strengths are needed in the structural design process. Unfortunately, published studies of the shear strength of an important local species: Bambusa blumeana (Kawayan Tinik) are limited. The authors focused on this property since joint connections are possibl...

The supply of timber is becoming scarce in the Philippines. Dendrocalamus asper (or giant bamboo) is a candidate for safe, sustainable, and low-cost alternative housing to timber. However, its mechanical properties are yet to be established. In this paper, the compressive strength, shear strength, and tensile strength parallel to the fiber of Dendr...

RESUMEN En este trabajo se presentan los resultados obtenidos de diferentes jornadas experimentales de componentes individuales de muros de bahareque encementado (Biopanel®), así como los resultados del ensayo ante carga cíclica lateral de una edificación construida a base del sistema BiBa®, el cual se conforma por Biopanel®, un sistema prefabricad...

To determine tension parallel to fiber properties of Bamboo, one can employ ISO 22157. However, several studies highlighted some challenges in using the method such as premature failure of testing due to force at clamping and slipping failure at the grips. Hence, this study aimed to look for a solution to address these challenges. This study invest...

The common testing protocol to determine the shear strength of bamboo parallel to grain is ISO 22157. However, widely documented limitations of this test procedure calls for an alternative testing protocol. This study compared ISO 22157 (TP1) and 2 alternative testing protocols proposed by Base Bahay (TP2a and 2b) in determining shear strength of b...

The use of cellulosic materials in the construction of low-rise housing in tropical climates has great potential. Bambusa blumeana (B. blumeana, J.A. and J.H. Schultes), the most abundantly available bamboo species in the Philippines, is a promising alternative material for the construction of cost-efficient buildings. However, to comply with munic...

Bamboo is a strong, fast growing and very sustainable material, having been used structurally for thousands of years in many parts of the world. In modern times, it has the potential to be an aesthetically pleasing and low-cost alternative to more conventional materials, such as timber, as demonstrated by some visually impressive recent structures....

Bamboo is a strong, fast growing and sustainable material, having been used structurally for thousands of years in many parts of the world. In modern times, it has the potential to be an aesthetically pleasing and low-cost alternative to more conventional materials, such as timber, as demonstrated by some visually impressive recent structures. This...

This paper highlights the need for a more inclusive and sustainable development of social housing in rapidly developing countries of Asia, Latin America, and Africa. At the example of the Philippines, a multi-perspective development process for a bamboo-based building system is developed. Sustainability Assessment Criteria are defined through liter...

This chapter serves to summarise the state of the art of the process of material characterisation of bamboo for structural purposes. It also seeks to outline the key characteristics a bamboo researcher or engineer would need to identify for this purpose. The morphological and anatomical characteristics of the bamboo culm are briefly presented. Tren...

La presente norma tiene como fin presentar los requisitos mínimos que se requieren para el diseño y construcción sismo resistente de viviendas construidas con muros de bahareque encementado en los países del área Andina (Colombia, Ecuador y Perú). Los requisitos aquí expuestos son de índole general y están dirigidos a todos los profesionales de la...

This paper presents an overview of the issues about the construction industry in Mexico and the world, and the importance of rescuing and validate vernacular building systems to provide sustainable solutions to the housing deficit in Mexico. A constructive system called “bahareque” is explained, relevant results of four studies about the seismic b...

The urgency for energy and material efficiency in the building sector increases every day. In the case of Switzerland, a buildings main energy demand occurs during its use/operation phase and is mainly related to heating demands during the winter season. As a means of reducing these demands, current building practice in Switzerland is to insulate w...

An exploratory study, conducted at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, of the potential use of glued laminated bamboo guadua (Guadua angustifolia Kunt) as a structural material is presented in this paper. The influence of the direction of the fiber and the location of the laminae in the mechanical properties is discussed. The compression,...

A study is conducted to establish the suitability of Colombian glued laminated bamboo (Guadua Angustifolia Kunt) for structural applications. As part of this study, selected mechanical properties of glued laminated guadua (GLG) were investigated and they are reported in this paper. Results confirm that GLG has similar mechanical properties to best...

Designing guadua structures has been limited due to the absence of a design procedure, in spite of the great amount of testing that has been done with respect to its mechanical properties. This paper starts with the results of the mechanical properties of guadua, and moves on to determine its allowable stresses. Then it proposes procedures for desi...