Review on materials and structures inspired by bamboo

With excellent mechanical properties and structural form, bamboo has attracted more and more scientists’ attention. Biomimetics is a bridge connecting the advantages of organisms with engineering applications that can improve the performance of both materials and structures. This paper aims to guide the design of bamboo-inspired materials, structural members, or structures using bamboo or other renewable materials, and simultaneously guide some designs of nanomaterials at mesoscale to some extent. The characteristics of bamboo at mesoscale and microscale are introduced firstly. And then materials and structures inspired by bamboo are presented and discussed to promote the bamboo-inspired design in engineering. Some points that need to be further researched are proposed afterward. Relevant researches indicated that some functional properties of materials have been improved and the load-bearing capacity and the energy-absorption ability of most structures have been generally improved. And further researches in this area are discussed to give some references for the upcoming work.