The effectiveness of rubber short fibers reinforcing on mechanical characterization of clay adobe elements under static loading

Abstract

According to the evidence of numerous advantages of earthen buildings, there is an increasing interest to study adobe elements for sustainable development. This paper presents experimental investigation alongside numerical simulation of several adobe elements under compression, direct tension, three-point bending and indirect shear tests to have a better understanding of their basic mechanical properties. Two different mix-design of clay adobes including plain and short tire fibers reinforced adobes with unique soil type, water content and compacting level are provided. The tire fibers are the waste production of tire factories which are hazardous to the green environment. Numerical simulations are conducted in ABAQUS software for further analysis. In this direction, the material constitutive model and the damage indices are defined based on the experimental stress-strain relations which are achieved during this study and the model of concrete damage plasticity was considered in the software. Furthermore, the experimental observations for direct tensile and indirect shear tests were documented by means of a Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique from a 2-D DIC system. The effectiveness of the added short fibers on the mechanical properties of the reinforced adobe were thoroughly discussed.