Executive Summary : | Housing for all is one of the prime aspects considered by most of the developing nations all over the world. Promoting affordable earthen housings made of either stabilised adobe blocks or rammed technique for economically challenged people may be a key step towards achieving this mission. Thermal insulation, acoustics, environment friendly material, cheap etc. are the primary advantageous factors behind selection of such housings over the globe since ancient times. But, these houses were found to be highly fragile with respect to different environmental forces. In fact, such structures exhibited extensive damage during past seismic events. On the other hand, considering its affordability factor the lower economic cluster of people was still using these houses with an unacceptable risk. From this backdrop, present proposal is aimed towards enhancement of earthquake resistance of these particular cluster of earthen houses by developing new interlocking earthen block masonry which may assist affordable housing keeping sustainable aspects and capable of withstanding significant lateral forces. Dry-stack stabilised earthen masonry systems will be produced by laying interlocking brick units without mortar joints. This will reduce the overall cost and the time required for construction. Even though dry stack masonry system possess these advantages, the system is not been widely executed, this is mainly due to the lack of understanding on this dry-stack masonry wall systems. To address the seismic stability as well failure issues, the present project aims to develop a novel interlocking pattern for the interlock wall masonry unit. This proposed project develops the interlocking blocks using eco-friendly and abundantly available lateritic soil in our country mixed with certain percentage of cement and locally available industrial wastes such as rice husk ash or fly ash as a stabilizer. The performance of the developed wall masonry unit will be studied including seismic loads. Moreover, the proposed project will investigate the failure pattern of the masonry unit produced using the developed interlocking blocks and compare the same with the traditional adobe masonry pattern. A demonstrative shock table test on the proposed earthen masonry houses will be organized in rural areas to develop awareness about this local technology. This project will also help to boost local entrepreneurship and economy of rural people. |