The paper presents an experimental program aiming at assessing the mechanical performance of rammed earth walls, namely under compression and shear loading. Axial compression and diagonal compression tests were carried out for this purpose, which allowed determining important mechanical parameters, such as compressive strength, Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio, shear strength and shear modulus. Furthermore, it allowed assessing the level of non-linear behaviour of the respective stress–strain relationships as well as the failure modes. The experimental results were then used in the calibration of numerical models (finite element method) for simulating the non-linear behaviour of rammed earth under shear loading. Both macro- and micro modelling approaches were considered for this purpose. The total strain rotating crack model was used to simulate the behaviour of the rammed earth material, while the Mohr–Coulomb failure criterion was used to simulate the behaviour of interfaces between layers. In general, the numerical models achieved good agreement with the experimental results, but uncertainties related to the definition of the input parameters required to perform a sensitivity analysis. The compressive strength, the Poisson's ratio, the tensile strength and the tensile fracture energy revealed to be the most important parameters in the analyses.
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.
An experimental investigation was carried out to study the in-plane shear behaviour of rammed earth structural elements strengthened with polyester fabric strips. The original idea for the retrofitting with polyester fabric strips was to introduce a vertical element for walls in order to take up horizontal loads resulting in a shear response of the building element. It has to be considered that vertical slits into the walls for fixing the strips are points of weakness and have to be mitigated by the adhesive. In this case a base coat mortar was employed. Strengthened elements were tested to exploit the strength potential of earthen materials and to solve its lack of tensile strength, significantly improving not only strength but also ductility. As part of the study results of a testing campaign of unstrengthened structural elements were considered. Strengthened elements were tested in diagonal compression/shear and cyclic shear-compression. A unique reinforcement orientation was used. The results of these tests are presented in this paper and include the load-displacement behaviours, crack patterns, failure modes. The results showed that the reinforcement was the most effective under cyclic shear-compression tests, with increase in load and displacement capacity observed. Under diagonal compression the reinforcement did not likely contribute significantly to the shear resistance, due to a lack of embedment length of the strips.