Behavior of rammed earth walls under compression or shear stress [Comportement de murs en pisé sous sollicitation de compression ou de cisaillement]

Due to its excellent carbon footprint,an immediate availability which does not require heavy equipment for its exploitation,and also its quasi-infinite recyclability,earthen construction is certainly a building technique with a promising new future. however there are few studies on the characterization of the mechanical behaviour of earthen structures,which is an obstacle to its development. the aim of this study is to characterize the mechanical behaviour of rammed earth walls subjected to compressive or shear load. rammed earth is a constructive system implemented by compacting raw earth in successive layers in a mould. four identical walls were built,and after drying,two of them were subjected to a mechanical compressive load and two others to a shear load. in the last case,for the first shear test,shear load is applied between two interface layers,which permit to characterise the behaviour of the current zone. for the second shear test,the applied horizontal load is directly applied to an interface layer to gauge its behaviour. the different phases of the walls behaviour,characterised at the local and global levels,the failure mode and the corresponding bearing capacity,were recorded and analysed using local displacement and load sensors as well as field sensor as stereovision. numerical simulations were also carried out; finite element method and discrete element method were both considered. a fairly good correlation was obtained with experimental results.