Tensile Characterization of Composite Adobe Specimens Reinforced with Short Fibers, an Experimental Study

According to the evidence of low polluting and sufficient thermal, humidity and acoustic insulating of the soil blocks, there is an increasing interest to study earthen building for sustainable development. By the way, the adobe strength is strongly affected by its composition, compacting type and curing. This study tries to investigate directly and indirectly the tensile properties of two different mix designed adobe (plain adobes and tire fibers reinforced adobes) with constant soil type, water content and compacting type. All the adobes were made by cutting the adobe ingots produced by spiral compacting machine. A number of direct tension and three points bending tests were carried out on adobe specimens. For every type of adobes, the mechanical properties in direct tension and three points bending tests including the estimation of tensile Young modules and the peak strength and its associated normal strain were measured. The experimental observations were attained using Digital Image Correlation (DIC) data from an acquired 2-D DIC system (Ncorr, Matlab software). Finally, the direct and indirect tensile properties of adobes were compared and the effectiveness of short fibers were also investigated.