Suitable stabilisation methods for extruded earth masonry

Within the UK there has been a growing use in the past decade of vernacular earthen architecture. While this resurgence of earth construction is largely due to the growing awareness of climate change, earth construction within the UK has largely remained atypical. Modern earth masonry that utilises the current manufacturing techniques such as brick extrusion ensures consistency and high quality that can be easily adapted into current construction techniques. Extruded earth bricks typically have an approximate compressive strength of 3.5MPa, but the bricks lose all strength when fully saturated. This loss of strength due to plausible accidental or intentional wetting is the biggest barrier to the adoption of thin walled earth masonry within the UK. This paper discusses using cement and lime for the stabilisation of extruded earth masonry. Representative small scaled bricks with increasing mass fractions of stabiliser were manufactured by extrusion for testing. The compression strength of samples were measured both in the ambient conditions state and after 24 hours of submersion in water. The development of strength over 28 days as well as the loss of strength due to saturation is presented.