MAIN ENGINEERINGSPROPRETIES OF STABILISED EARTH BLOCK BRICKS FORMULATED WITH SOILS FROM NDJAMENA-CHAD

The most used bricks in house building in NDjamena, city of Chad which is situated in semi dry arid area with 600 millimeters of pluviometry per year and 50 °C as highest temperature, are raw clay bricks, terracotta bricks or bricks in ciment block. The raw clay bricks have strong sensibility in water and weak resistance to compression. The terracotta and cement block bricks have high thermal conductivity contrary to the adobe and their manufacturingcontribute to destroy the environment. The aim of this paper is to search Stabilised Earth Block (SEB) bricks whichare made with clay, sand and few percent of cement and respond to climatic, environmental and economic constraints. Therefore, some bricks are built in mixing differentspercents of sand and clay (M1 : 40% sand and 60% clay, M2 : 50% sand and 50% clay, M3 : 60% sand and 40% clay, M4 : 70% sand and 30% clay, M5 : 30% sand, 30% slime and 40% clay, and M6 : 40 % sand, 20% slime and 40% clay) for obtaining physical stabilizationand adding 8%, 10% or 15% of cementin each type of brick for the chemical stabilization. Theuse of moulding press machine grants already the mechanical stabilization to these bricks. Proctor test has allowedto retain M1, M3 and M4 for searching the best values of the rate absorption of water by capillarity , the resistance in compression and the thermal conductivity of these bricks. The results of tests show bricks M3 with 10% of cement have the good values 21,23 g.cm-².min-1/2 of rate absorption, 3,82 MPa of resistance in compression and 0,5W.m-1.°K-1 as thermal conductivity.