Experimental analysis of clay boards made with coir

Abstract

The purpose of this work was to study the incorporation of coir in composite materials for earth construction in order to identify and evaluate their performance when applied to building elements such as non-structural walls, wall cladding, and suspended ceilings. Several compositions with different percentages of clay, sand, gypsum, and coir were studied. The density of the mixes with coir addition had an expected reduction, as well as the bending strength. However, the inclusion of sand in the percentages studied increased the bending strength. Still, the addition of gypsum highly increased the mixtures bending strength.