Concrete columns requiring strengthening intervention always contain a certain percentage of steel hoops. Applying strips of wet layup carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) sheets inbetween the existent steel hoops might, therefore, be an appropriate confinement technique with both technical and economic advantages, when full wrapping of a concrete column is taken as a basis of comparison. To assess the effectiveness of this discrete confinement strategy, circular cross-sectional concrete elements confined by distinct arrangements of strips of CFRP sheet are submitted to a direct compression load up to the failure point. The influence of the width of the strip, distance between strips, number of CFRP layers per strip, CFRP stiffness, and concrete strength class on the increase of the load carrying capacity and ductility of concrete columns, is evaluated. An analytical model is developed to predict the compressive stress-strain relationship of concrete columns confined by discrete and continuous CFRP arra...

A research work focused on studying earth render for tabique application purposes is presented. Initially, a brief description of the tabique building technique is provided. The relevance of the application of this traditional building technique is also highlighted. Different compositions of earth render are experimentally analyzed and the respective performance is evaluated. Flexural and compressive strengths, workability, drying shrinkage cracking, and water resistance are the material properties assessed. A simple earth render is selected as being adequate for tabique building applications and it is applied on the manufacturing of a tabique wall sample. This wall sample is monitored in terms of thermal insulation ability and its thermal transmission coefficient is estimated. Taking into account that there is still a lack of published technical information related to this topic, this article may contribute to solve this limitation and to give some guidance in future repairing processes of tabique construction. The technological benefit of adding lime or cement with earth is researched. Real tabique timber structure samples are applied in order to validate the obtained experimental results.

The main goal of this study is to assess the behaviour of soil–cement blocks with incorporation of organic wastes. The problem of waste accumulation exists worldwide and has become a concern in today’s society, leading to enormous environmental damage. One of the possibilities for reducing their environmental impact is the reuse of these wastes in new materials. However, incorporating waste changes the mechanical, physical and thermal properties of the new material. In order to evaluate the potential use of waste in blocks composition, laboratory tests were conducted and the results were analysed. This article presents the fire behaviour of ecological soil–cement blocks with waste incorporation. Therefore, an experimental programme was performed using samples of wall panel with soil–cement blocks. The wall specimen under fire conditions was also analysed by a non-linear transient finite element numerical model, in time and temperature domains, and the numerical and experimental temperature fields were compared.