Abstract
The importance of green and sustainable materials in civil engineering is undeniable. Alongside modern practices that improve the properties of standard building materials, there are ways to revive forgotten techniques, including straw bale buildings. Straw bales are load-bearing structures, which are applied based on handed-down experience and lack standard approaches in testing, design, and application. Therefore, a goal ahead is to describe every aspect of the process in technical detail. The objective of this paper is to highlight practical ideas for testing straw bales on a hydraulic press machine and to provide a basic statistical investigation of the results obtained. Two basic series were prepared, one without a side barrier and the other with a side barrier. The reason for this was to delineate the limits of the real behaviour of the straw bale on the load bearing wall of the house. Due to the assumed slight embedment of adjacent bales, the real result were within these limits. The experimental plan, basic results, simplified correlations, and statistical evaluation are presented. Recommendations for a further testing and evaluation are provided. As expected, the results with and without the lateral barrier differ by almost 18% for the true strain.
Highlights
IntroductionStraw as a component of buildings (roofs, insulation, and load bearing elements) appeared in the Middle Ages but was used in the early 20th century [1]
Straw as a component of buildings appeared in the Middle Ages but was used in the early 20th century [1]
The obtained results are divided according to the process of the experimental program, where the basic measured geometric and material parameters are first presented together with statistical values of the mean, standard deviation, and coefficient of variation
Summary
Straw as a component of buildings (roofs, insulation, and load bearing elements) appeared in the Middle Ages but was used in the early 20th century [1]. As a main load-bearing element or part of a load-bearing structure [2,3,4], have undeniable advantages in terms of low environmental load [5], minimal energy consumption in production [6], and advantageous thermal engineering properties [7]. A large amount of straw is burned in the field [9] or used in incinerators for energy production [10], which entails a certain increase in environmental burden that can be counteracted by the alternative use of a straw.
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