Abstract
The presence of cracks debilitates the structural performance of rammed earth. Grout injection is a repair solution put forward recently, where compatibility issues demand using mud grouts. Little is known on this topic, whereby an experimental program on the mechanical effectiveness of grout injection for repairing cracks in rammed earth was performed. Specimens tested under bending and diagonal compression were retested after repair with injection of mud grouts. Mud grouts incorporating the original soil of the rammed earth are shown to perform better and their injection achieves satisfactory shear strength recovery, but is less effective in recovering initial shear stiffness.
Highlights
Building in rammed earth consists in compacting moist earth by layers inside a removable formwork to build monolithic walls
This paper deals with mechanical effectiveness of the repair of cracks in unstabilised rammed earth (URE) walls by means of injection of unmodified mud grouts
An experimental program was carried out and the results obtained allowed to point out the following conclusions: - The shear behaviour of URE walls seems to result from the contribution of the binding promoted by the clay fraction of the soil and from the friction and interlocking promoted by the coarse aggregates
Summary
Building in rammed earth consists in compacting moist earth by layers inside a removable formwork to build monolithic walls. Silva et al [20] analysed the influence of the composition of unmodified mud grouts on their fresh-state rheology, hardened-state strength, as well as on the adhesion capacity based on three-point bending tests of small-scale unstabilised rammed earth (URE) specimens. The results of these last tests seem to show that the mud grouts employed present good efficiency in terms of strength recover after repair. In addition to the assessment of the mechanical repair effectiveness of different mud grouts, this experimental program aimed at characterizing the mechanical properties of the rammed earth by including axial compression, three-point bending and diagonal compression tests on representative specimens
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