Research on Creep Damage of Bamboo Scrimber Based on a Four-Element Model and Different Derivative Approaches

Regarding the application of composite materials in modern industry, creep is one of the most important factors that should be seriously considered. In this study, a four-element model was built to carry out compressive creep research on bamboo scrimber, a commonly seen natural-fiber-reinforced material. Both fractional and memory-dependent derivative approaches were adopted to analyze the mechanical performance of the dashpot body in the model. Specifically, the stress–strain relationship of the Kelvin body was expressed based on the fractional derivative approach, while creep acceleration was applied for the memory-dependent approach. In addition, several groups of corresponding creep tests were used to provide analysis data. The research results show that compared with some other reported models, this newly built four-element model performs adequately in analyzing strain growth during the whole creep damage process for all tested specimens, especially for the effect of acceleration in the final stage of the whole process. In addition, for the steady creep process, the performance of the proposed model is still satisfactory. Therefore, bamboo scrimber is suitable for use in modern industry, especially in whole life-cycle design.