This recommendation is the outcome of research conducted by a working group within the RILEM Technical Committee 236-BBM ‘Bio-aggregate-based building Materials’. The work of the group related to the study of construction materials made from plant particles. The major raw material utilised being renewable, recyclable and easily available plant particles. These particles are obtained from the processing of hemp, flax, miscanthus, pine, maize, sunflower, bamboo and other plants. In this report, the outcome of the Round Robin Testing is centred on hemp because hemp shiv is the bio-aggregate that is the most widely used in building materials and the most studied in the literature. The first round robin test of the TC-BBM published in the State of The Art Report of Technical Committee 236-BBM ‘Bio-aggregate-based building Materials’ was carried out to compare the protocols in use by the different laboratories (labs) to measure initial water content, bulk density, water absorption, particle grading and thermal conductivity. The aim was to define a standardised characterisation protocol developed from those used by the different labs. The different methodologies used by 7 labs constitute a set of statistically representative data which have been analysed to develop this recommendation for the characterisation of hemp shiv.

In this paper, the results of static and dynamic hygric tests on 114 unfired clay masonry samples are presented. Samples were prepared as Compressed Earth Blocks (CEB) or plasters. The variability of soils, the soil density and the preparation methods were investigated to determine their influence on the moisture buffering capacity, water vapour permeability and sorption isotherms. The Moisture buffering Value (MBV) was measured according to the Nordtest protocol and the results could therefore be compared to conventional materials. The results indicate unfired clay masonry has a much higher potential to regulate the indoor humidity than conventional construction materials previously reported in the literature. Because of the benefits of humidity buffering, using unfired clay masonry could reduce health risk for inhabitants, reduce mould growth, reduce energy consumption of air conditioning and ventilation systems and increase the durability of building materials. The presented results show that the soil selection (mineralogy and particle size distribution) is more important for humidity buffering than changes than can be made to a particular soil (density, preparation methods or stabilisation) and the information presented will therefore allow designers to maximise the buffering capacity of buildings

Experiments were carried out according to the Nordtest protocol to study the moisture buffer potential of hemp-lime walls with a range of different internal linings and surface treatments. It was observed that the moisture buffer value was ‘Excellent’ when the inner surface of hemp-lime was exposed. ‘Excellent’ moisture buffer values were also obtained for hemp-lime with lime plaster. All other assemblies demonstrated ‘Good’ moisture buffer value. Moisture buffer values of the assemblies, after application of paint on the upper surfaces, were also determined. It was observed that application of synthetic pigment based trade paint could reduce the moisture buffer performance of the assembly consisting of hemp-lime and lime-plaster from ‘Excellent’ to ‘Good’ while between 61-69% reduction of moisture buffer value was observed for the other assemblies. However, the reduced buffer values of the assemblies are still comparable with other moisture buffering building materials. It was further observed that moisture buffer performance was improved when clay based organic paint was used instead of trade paint

This paper, for the first time, fully characterizes the intrinsic physical parameters of hemp shiv including cell wall microstructure, pore size distribution and absolute density. Scanning electron microscopy revealed microstructural features similar to hardwoods. Confocal microscopy revealed three major layers in the cell wall: middle lamella, primary cell wall and secondary cell wall. Computed tomography improved the visualization of pore shape and pore connectivity in three dimensions. Mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP) showed that the average accessible porosity was 76.67 ± 2.03% and pore size classes could be distinguished into micropores (3–10 nm) and macropores (0.1–1 µm and 20–80 µm). The absolute density was evaluated by helium pycnometry, MIP and Archimedes' methods. The results show that these methods can lead to misinterpretation of absolute density. The MIP method showed a realistic absolute density (1.45 g cm ⁻³ ) consistent with the density of the known constituents, including lignin, cellulose and hemi-cellulose. However, helium pycnometry and Archimedes’ methods gave falsely low values owing to 10% of the volume being inaccessible pores, which require sample pretreatment in order to be filled by liquid or gas. This indicates that the determination of the cell wall density is strongly dependent on sample geometry and preparation.