Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

ECO FRIENDLY AND EARTHQUAKE RESISTANT BUILDING CONSTRUCTED USING EARTH BLOCK–AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Lakshmi Keshav, V.G. Srisanthi and N. Rajkumar

Abstract

This experimental study aims at making extensive use of raw earth as the main building material, thereby using a local resource to help develop technologies that are energy saving, eco-friendly and sustainable particularly in earthquake and this research has been oriented towards the development of a costeffective technology. For this two reduced scale models of single room building constructed using Compressed Stablized Earth Block(CSEB) from locally available soil were subjected to Shake table tests. One model was constructed with earthquake resisting features [EQRF] that have sill band, lintel band and vertical bands to control the building vibration and another one was without EQRF. To examine the seismic capacity of the models were subjected to long-period ground motion by large amplitude by many cycles of repeated loading , the test specimen was shaken repeatedly until the failure. The test results from Hi-end Data Acquisition system show that model with EQRF behave better than without EQRF. This modified masonry model with eco friendly material combined with EQRF is used to improve the behavior of masonry building.