In-plane shear resistance between the rammed earth blocks with simple interventions: Experimentation and finite element study

Abstract

The paper presents experimental and numericalworks to assess the in-plane shear characteristics of rammed earth (RE) structures in Bhutan. Thematerial characterization works involve compressive and tensile splitting strength tests on extracted cylindrical core samples. The effects of the RE layer thickness and drying period in the strength characteristics of the rammed earth is presented. Themain experimental part reports in-plane shear tests on 3 test specimens, 1200 mmlong, 1200 mmhigh, and 600mm wide. The testmatrix has unreinforced and reinforced specimens with variable RE layer thicknesses. For the reinforced RE specimen, the effectiveness of a simple intervention with insertion of reinforced concrete dowel at the RE block interface as a strengthening measure is discussed. Furthermore, corresponding finite element models were developed to verify the test observations. Both the experimental observations and numerical computations showed the effectiveness of proposed intervention technique in enhancing the shear strength and delaying the slip along the RE joint interface. The results showed that the shear strength of the reinforced specimen increased by 12.3% over the benchmark specimen.