Assessing the environmental performance of stabilised rammed earth walls using a climatic simulation chamber

The SHU climatic simulation chamber is a novel piece of apparatus that allows testing of full-sized walls with realistic inner and outer wall climatic conditions. Four SRE test walls were successfully constructed and tested over four separate regimes to measure physical properties such as pressure-driven moisture ingress, rate of moisture penetration, and internal/interstitial condensation. The walls far exceeded a series of cyclic pressure-driven rainfall penetration tests based on BS 4315-2. After 5 days of exposure to static pressure-driven moisture ingress there was no evidence of moisture penetration or erosion. The embedded sensor array detected no significant increase in the relative humidity or liquid moisture content inside the test walls, throughout a range of temperature differentials with high levels of humidity, indicating a negligible risk of internal or interstitial condensation.