Performance of Stabilized Earth with Wheat Straw and Slag
- PDF / 1,889,290 Bytes
- 10 Pages / 432 x 648 pts Page_size
- 62 Downloads / 178 Views
MRS Advances © 2020 Materials Research Society DOI: 10.1557/adv.2020.174
Performance of Stabilized Earth with Wheat Straw and Slag Benhaoua, W1, Grine, K.1, Kenai, S.1*
1
Geomaterials and civil engineering laboratory, University of Blida1, Algeria;
*Corresponding author
ABSTRACT Stabilized earth is a very ancient material that has been used in many countries as a low cost, environment friendly construction material. However, its durability under humid environments is low. Stabilization using cement, lime and natural fibres could enhance its durability and lowers the risk of cracking. This paper presents an experimental investigation into the performance of stabilised local soil by either, cement mixed with a proportion of granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) /or straw naturel fibres. Unconfined compressive strength (UCS), shrinkage, wetting and drying, capillary absorption and thermal conductivity tests were performed on both untreated soil samples and stabilised soil samples. The results show that stabilising the soil with cement and GBFS increased both compressive strength, durability, thermal conductivity and decreased the capillary absorption and the shrinkage. The addition of natural wheat fibres increased the capillary absorption but leads to a decrease in the thermal conductivity and to a further reduction in the shrinkage and hence a better insulating less prone to cracking material.
1 INTRODUCTION Earth is the most abundant and oldest material on the planet. Today, more than 150 world heritage sites are wholly or partly built of raw earth. The world's population living in houses and cities made of earth material is estimated at 30%, an amount corresponding almost to 1,500,000,000 inhabitants. These structures consist of a wide variety of historical monuments, villages and towns, family houses and archaeological sites [1, 2]. In Algeria, the most famous historical constructions witnessing the use of earth material consisting mainly of adobe, mud bricks are found in the southern part (Sahara).
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Rice University, on 28 Apr 2020 at 04:10:04, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1557/adv.2020.174
The raw earth, offers the advantages to be low energy consumption, highly aesthetic and a good thermal inertia material. However, traditional earth constructions, is highly vulnerable to water absorption and other atmospheric agents leading to a decrease in their strength, durability, thermal comfort and to the “poorly finished’ appearance giving a negative image to the earth to be a poor construction material [3]. Several means have been used to improve the properties of earth material in order to reduce its sensitivity to water, increase its strength and improve its durability. Building blocks stabilisation with natural fibres such as barley straw, kenaf fibre and date palm fibre have been an alternate building material that have resulted in environmentally and economically sustainable o
Data Loading...
