Seismic behavior and shaking direction influence on adobe wall structures reinforced with geogrid

The aim of this work was to assess and validate the construction technology proposed in the manual published by the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), Building Hygienic and Earthquake-Resistant Adobe Houses Using Geomesh Reinforcement. In order to validate the proposed technology, two full-scale adobe wall house models were built and subjected to dynamic tests on the PUCP's unidirectional shaking table. Geogrid was used as reinforcement for the adobe walls. One of the models was aligned with the direction of shaking, so that its longitudinal walls were subjected to in-plane forces and its transverse walls to out-of-plane forces. The other model was turned 45° with respect to the direction of shaking in order to have all the walls subjected to both in-plane and out-of-plane forces. The results of both tests were also compared to those obtained during previous tests of an unreinforced adobe model. © 2013, Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.