Structural behavior of rammed earth walls under lateral cyclic loading: A comparative experimental study

Abstract Rammed earth is one of the oldest masonry construction techniques such that there are many ancient structures built of rammed earth still existing. Recently, applications of rammed earth are encountered more often, due to its ecological advantages such as renewability, sustainability, environmental protection, insulation and use of environmentally-friendly materials. Although it has been widely used in masonry construction, knowledge related to behavior of these structures or structural members is limited. Under this circumstance, in this study, behaviors of stabilized and non-stabilized rammed earth walls were investigated comparatively with masonry brick and aerated concrete walls. For this purpose, non-stabilized, 10% cement stabilized, 10% cement stabilized with 1% glass fibers and 5% cement stabilized with 5% blast furnace slag mixtures were produced in dimensions of 20 cm × 150 cm × 150 cm rammed earth walls. Cyclic behaviors of the rammed earth walls were compared with masonry brick and aerated concrete walls with the same dimensions by using hinged loading test set-up. Structural properties such as load carrying capacities, total energy dissipation and stiffness degradation of the masonry walls were determined by utilizing the results of cyclic loading tests. At the end of the study, it was concluded that rammed earth wall stabilized using 10% cement showed the best structural performance. Surprisingly, performance of masonry brick wall fell behind of other masonry walls, even though it is the most commonly used material in masonry constructions.