. . . . . . . . . .    ANM 2010     3rd International Conference on Advanced Nano Materials     12-15 September 2010 - Agadir, Morocco Back    Abstract ANMM215 PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT OF EARTH-BASED CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS WITH NATURAL SUGARS - AN EXPERIMENTAL TEST CAMPAIGN J. Pinto, R. Costa, A. Paiva  /  H. Varum University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal  /  University of Aveiro, Portugal . Recent statistics indicates that approximately one third of World’s population lives in buildings constructed of earth based materials. Among the long inventory of traditional construction materials, raw earth have always taken an important ranking position, easily justified by its own physical and chemical properties, being ecological, recyclable, abundant and economic. An experimental research work developed at the Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro University focused on the biomimetic study of the Andorinha-dos-beirais bird nest concluded that this bird probably adds a certain amount of glucose type sugar into the clay material during the building process of its nest. The influence of the glucose sugar type addition into the nest structural performance was investigated through compression tests on specimens, varying the liquid phase, sugar percentage and curing period. Experimental tests have shown that an agglutination phenomenon may occur resulting from the building process adopted by the Andorinha-dos-beirais bird, which increase the quality of this raw material. Based on the results of this experimental work, proposals for stabilizing existing earth construction materials are derived, as well as for the improvement of the performance of this raw material in new constructions. . © nanoAC . . . . . . . . . .

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