Effect of straw fiber reinforcement on the mechanical properties of adobe

bricks
Rogiros Illampas†*, Vasilios G. Loizou‡, and Ioannis Ioannou‡

Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus

†

‡
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Cyprus

This paper presents the outcomes of an experimental study investigating the effect of natural fibers on
the mechanical properties of highly deformable hand-made adobe bricks. A number of soil mixtures,
containing different proportions of straw fiber reinforcement, were designed and produced in the
laboratory. Specimens of variable forms were mould-casted, cured under controlled conditions and
tested in various ways. Emphasis was placed on investigating the response of the hardened mixtures to
compressive and tensile loads. For this purpose, uniaxial compression tests were conducted on test
units with different aspect ratios. In addition, a customized set-up was designed and used for the direct
tensile load testing of ‘dog bone’ specimens. Flexural strength tests were also carried out on half-brick
specimens for comparison purposes. In all the aforementioned tests, displacement controlled loading
procedures and deformation monitoring were implemented to obtain data regarding both the pre- and
post-peak behaviour of the specimens.
The experimental results show that, increasing the fiber content in the soil mixture reduces the
apparent density and elastic modulus of the hardened material. Furthermore, mixtures with high fiber
content generally tend to develop lower mechanical strengths, but can sustain significantly higher
deformations. It was thus observed that straw fibers can increase the deformability of adobes under
compressive and flexural loading regimes, precluding sudden failure when the load-bearing capacity
of the material is exceeded. The effect of fiber reinforcement on the post-cracking tensile response was
found to be rather limited, since all the specimens subjected to direct tension tests exhibited brittle
behaviour.