Mechanical characterization and elastic stiffness degradation of unstabilized rammed earth

Abstract

Rammed earth is attracting renewed interest due to its sustainability. In this work, a mechanical characterization of unstabilized rammed earth is presented. Compressive strength, Young’s modulus, and Poisson’s ratio were determined, with the first of these being the most representative mechanical property of rammed earth. Stress – strain curves were obtained from uniaxial compression tests. Creep is of great importance in the long-term assessment of historical buildings and in the design of new ones. Samples of rammed earth were subjected to a constant load for 15 days to study their creep behavior. In order to simulate the long-term behavior of the material, different rheological models were fitted to the experimental results. The instantaneous deformation of rammed earth samples caused by a sudden additional load (maintaining a previous service load level) was also studied. This is the first time that this phenomenon, called elastic stiffness degradation, has been studied for rammed earth material.