Development of environmental friendly indigenous compressed stabilized earth bricks

Earth being available abundantly has invariably been the main construction material in providing housing system. It is one of the oldest materials known to mankind for building construction. Even though its popularity decreased with discoveries of new materials and construction methods, but with glo

Project Title

Development of environmental friendly indigenous compressed stabilized earth bricks

Project Area of Specialization

Mechanical Engineering

Project Summary

Earth being available abundantly has invariably been the main construction material in providing housing system. It is one of the oldest materials known to mankind for building construction. Even though its popularity decreased with discoveries of new materials and construction methods, but with global high energy demands and environmental pollution, use of such environmentally friendly and energy efficient materials is the need of the hour. It presents a number of ecofriendly benefits like reduction in emission of CO2, lowering embodied energy level and maximizing the use of locally available sourced materials (walker ,2004). Earth can be utilized for construction in various ways. Though it has several unwanted properties such as poor stability, strength loss and erosion due to wind and heavy rainfall. These ill effects can be reduced significantly by stabilizing technique. Stabilizing is method used to enhance the strength and durability of earth by addition of some chemical or by mechanical means (compaction).

Notably fruitful research work has been carried out in recent times to make earth as a sustainable and ecofriendly construction material, this has ultimately led to a new masonry unit known as "compressed stabilized earthen brick (CSEB)". CSEB differs from traditional bricks, as it requires static or dynamic compaction for stabilization. CSEB offers several advantages over traditional bricks such as low carbon emission and energy consumption during production, and less skilled worker requirements.

Project Objectives

The research aims to utilized CSEB as an alternative to traditional clay bricks. The main objectives of this research are

• To propose a methodology for preparing CSEB blocks by utilizing local soil.
• To study the cement stabilizing phenomenon by preparing different mixes of varying proportions.
• To study the physical properties of CSEB units such as compressive and flexural strength and rate of absorption.
• To compare the experimental results from CSEB units with traditional clay bricks.

Project Implementation Method

The impletion of this research project will be carried out in the following steps:

• In first step, locally available soil will be extracted. The extracted soil will be made free of any impurities and prepared for processing.
• The extracted soil will be mixed with soil and cement would be used as stabilizing agent. Several mixes will be prepared with varying proportion of cement.
• In the next step, the prepared mix would be casted in molds. Several samples will be molded from each mix.
• The molded samples would be cured using polythene sheet or wet gunny.
• Several laboratory tests will be performed on the final CSEB samples including compressive strength test, rate of absorption and flexural test.

Benefits of the Project

The main benefits of this project are:

• This project will provide an alternative to traditional clay bricks by incorporating locally available materials.
• This study will also help in finding optimal mix proportion for CSEB, as various mix proportion will be evaluated.
• The project will provide the preliminary data for further research and use of CSEB units.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

This study intents to provide a base for use of CSEB units in construction. The final reports would consist of following:

• Test report forms from material testing of CSEB units including
  • Compressive strength test
  • Flexural strength test
  • Rate of Absorption
• Final thesis report on methodology adopted for research project (including photographs) along with analyzed results.

Final Deliverable of the Project

Software System

Core Industry

Manufacturing

Other Industries

Energy

Core Technology

Clean Tech

Other Technologies

Others

Sustainable Development Goals

Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Sustainable Cities and Communities, Climate Action

Required Resources

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