Abstract:
Although there are many ancient buildings constructed with earth as a walling material, bricks and
cement blocks have overtaken this material in the recent history. With the sustainable concepts being
actively promoted in the construction industry, stabilized earth is becoming popular in many parts of the
world due to various environmental problems associated with the use of conventional materials such as
clay mining, sand mining, etc.
Some recent advances in manually and hydraulically operated machines have allowed the manufacturing
of compressed stabilized earth bricks and blocks (CSEB) which could easily compete with burnt clay
bricks and cement sand blocks. These blocks have a distinct advantage of use of machines for
manufacturing which allow a greater freedom for controlling the quality. Since different sizes and types
of stabilized earth blocks are available, it is important to investigate the performance of those as walling
materials. Therefore, an experimental study was conducted to assess the performance of stabilized earth
bricks manufactured to the standard brick size, interlocking solid blocks, interlocking hollow blocks and
plain solid blocks.
In this study, the stabilized earth brick walls, which were constructed with different bond patterns such as
Flemish, English and Stretcher, have been investigated for the performance in load carrying capacity and
load deformation characteristics. The bricks were bonded with cement sand mortar. Both hollow and
plain interlocking blocks were bonded with a soil cement paste. The performance of different CSEB units
was compared in the study and also it was compared with that of burnt clay bricks and cement sand
blocks. The results revealed that burnt clay brick and stabilized earth brick wall panels behave in a similar
manner. However, different bond patterns have shown some variations in failure mechanisms.
