Laboratoire des Politiques Energétiques et Environnemental, Institut de Recherche sur les Energies Nouvelles, Universite Nangui Abrogoua d’Abobo-Adjamé 02 BP 801 Abidjan 02, Côte d’Ivoire
The purpose of this study is to design compressed earth bricks and evaluate the mechanical characteristics in the dry and wet state. To achieve this, bricks were made by adding ash and cement to clay sand. Different materials were elaborated in dry and wet state. The formulation of the materials is as follows: 05% of cement for 25% of ash for the first material, 05% of cement and 05% of ash for the second type and 03% of cement for 03% of ash for the last. All the bricks were tested in compression, at 14 days for some and 14 days plus 3 days of immersion in water for others. The different results obtained at the end of the different laboratory performance tests give compressive strengths of 3.28 MPa for the first type of formulation; 2.18 MPa for the second type and 2.06 MPa for the third type of formulation at 14 days in a dry state. In the wet state, the compressive strength is 2.05 MPa for the first type of mix; 1.09 MPa for the second type and 1.40 MPa for the third type of mix at 14 days and three days of immersion with the same cement and ash dosages. The optimum strength is obtained for dosages of 05% cement for 25% wood ash.