Building with Earth

Context: Some of the oldest buildings on the planet are made of earth and the population living in buildings made of raw earth is estimated at several billions. Today most people using raw earth to build home are in developing countries while home builders of developed countries have moved from traditional earth construction techniques to “modern” techniques using generally cement based materials.
Nowadays, in the face of global climate change, raw earth is again considered to be a valuable interesting building material in developed countries1 mainly because earth extraction is essentially free of CO2 and the raw earth is easy to recycle. The revival of raw earth as a raw material for construction is accompanied by a research and development effort to develop materials with optimized properties for their implementation and use.
Work: During the week students will address issues related to the production of building materials, their properties in use, their durability and their environmental impact by combining bibliographic, theoretical, numerical and experimental research to develop and implement materials that meet the requirements of a specification.

Materials Engineering
Physical Sciences

one-week

15/09/2024

– Describe the properties of raw earth,
-Describe the advantages and disadvantages of raw earth
– Propose specifications a material must meet to fulfill prescribed functions
– Implement a material complying with desired specifications
– Present the products, evaluate its quality and propose improvements.

Civil engineering, material sciences

1 week

1.5

Organization: The week will be launched by short presentations, exercises aiming to present existing techniques and familiarize the audience with the material and visit of a compressed earth block plant. Then students will work in small groups (5-6) on a particular issue. Each group will have to realize a material responding to some specifications, by combining experimental approaches (sample fabrication and characterization) and modeling tools. At the end of the week, the result of this work will be presented to the whole group and evaluated by a jury.

25

École nationale des ponts et chaussées

School of Engineering

Department of Civil Engineering