TY - JOUR A1 - Miccoli, Lorenzo A1 - Müller, U. A1 - Pospisil, S. T1 - Rammed earth walls strengthened with polyester fabric strips: Experimental analysis under in-plane cyclic loading JF - Construction and Building Materials N2 - This study analyses the mechanical behaviour under pseudo-dynamic loading of structural elements built in rammed earth and strengthened with polyester fabric strips. This strengthening technique was developed to exploit the strength potential of rammed earth and to solve its lack of tensile strength. For this reason, in-plane cyclic tests were carried out to investigate the shear behaviour of unstrengthened and strengthened walls. The strengthening technique requires low-tech equipment and workmanship, uses readily available, not expensive and industrially standardised materials. The experimental results were analysed in terms of stiffness degradation, energy dissipation capacity and equivalent viscous damping. Although the unstrengthened and strengthened walls confirmed a limited ductile behaviour, the findings confirm that the strengthening contributes to limit the spread of the diagonal cracks and provide an increase of strength in terms of horizontal load and displacement capacity. KW - Rammed earth KW - Pseudo-dynamic loads KW - Shear-compression tests KW - Strengthening KW - Polyester fabric strips PY - 2017 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2017.05.115 IS - 149 SP - 29 EP - 36 PB - Elsevier Ltd. AN - OPUS4-40497 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -