A Study of Adobes Made with No Usual Soils Concerning Grain Size Distribution Test
This article presents and discusses an adobe production with shows a clay/silt/sand proportion that is completely different from that recommended by most authors and construction associations. The main objective was to improve comprehension of earth behaviors as building material by studying these two atypical cases of adobe production. The soil was analyzed by different tests as the grain size distribution test and Atterberg limits. Adobe resistance was tested using a methodology proposed by Proterra network which was created by a group of researchers from different Iberian American laboratories. This methodology was used in Ph.D. thesis, too. The results show a soil with 1% clay and 65.1 silte and an average of resistance of 2.11 MPa for the adobes. These results show the importance of the clay mineral structure and the complexity of the soil behavior, indicating the need for additional studies.