Raw earth construction: Is there a role for unsaturated soil mechanics?

2014 ◽  
pp. 55-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
D Gallipoli ◽  
A Bruno ◽  
C Perlot ◽  
N Salmon
Keyword(s):  
Unsaturated Soil ◽  
Soil Mechanics ◽  
Earth Construction ◽  
Unsaturated Soil Mechanics ◽  
Raw Earth

scholarly journals Benefit of Unsaturated Soil Mechanics Approach on the Modeling of Early-Age Behavior of Rammed Earth Building

Materials ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 362
Author(s):  
Parul Chauhan ◽  
Noémie Prime ◽  
Olivier Plé
Keyword(s):  
Mechanical Behavior ◽  
Unsaturated Soil ◽  
Soil Mechanics ◽  
Material Behavior ◽  
Rammed Earth ◽  
Safety Criterion ◽  
Practical Guide ◽  
Earth Construction ◽  
Failure State ◽  
Unsaturated Soil Mechanics

Rammed earth has the potential to reduce the carbon footprint and limit the energy consumption in the building sector due to its sustainable characteristics. Still, its use is not generalized due to a lack of understanding of the material behavior, notably its sensitivity to water. The coupled hydro-mechanical behavior has been recently studied in the framework of unsaturated soil mechanics, using suction as the parameter to represent the hydric state. This dependency of the mechanical behavior on the hydric state leads to uncertainty of the drying period required to progress in the construction process. Notably, the drying period before building the next floor is unknown. To determine the drying period, thermo-hydro-mechanical coupled finite element method simulations were carried out on a single wall by using the unsaturated soil mechanics approach and safety criterion recommendations from the practical guide for rammed earth construction in France. It was determined that it takes significant time for the construction of additional floor both in ‘summer-like’ and ‘winter-like’ environmental conditions, whereas the walls were far away from the ultimate failure state. Thus the drying periods were overestimated. It was concluded that the safety criterion from the practical guide is very conservative and drying periods can be reduced without significantly compromising the safety factor.

Unsaturated soil mechanics and applications

2020 ◽  
pp. 207-219
Author(s):  
Buddhima Indraratna ◽  
Ana Heitor ◽  
Jayan S. Vinod
Keyword(s):  
Unsaturated Soil ◽  
Soil Mechanics ◽  
Unsaturated Soil Mechanics
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