The Experimental Investigation Of The Straw Bale Wall Under The Horizontal Loads

The building of new socialist countryside of our China is in full swing. The traditional adobe houses in countryside were replaced by brick houses. Neither can the brick house fully demonstrate the characteristics of the new socialist countryside, nor can it have good heat insulation. What’s the worse, the brick houses’ environmental performance is worse. Nevertheless, the straw bale material can make up for this shortcoming of brick material. The using of the straw bale material in new socialist countryside’s residence not only turns waste into treasure, but also improves the effect of heat insulation. What’s more, it can increase the living comfort of the house.This paper is based on the related literature at home and abroad. And the author studied the shear performance of the level loads test on the specimen of the straw bale wall bunched with steel mesh, then the author got a series of reference coefficient that including hysteresis curve, load- displacement curve,skeleton curve, energy dissipation capacity and ductility factors.In this paper, the author used the Finite Element Analysis of ANSYS to simulate a comparative analysis to the experiment, and the author also used this software to build the test wall model. The unit simulations were made by the author according to the material properties. The element of SOLID185 is for the straw bale. The element of SOLID65 is for mortar. The wall model was loaded by the author in the way of shift control. After figured out the data of the finite element model, the author used the POSTI to draw the stress effects and the cloud chart, then he used the POST26 to plot the corresponding load- displacementcurve, at last he made a comparative between the result came from the finite element model and the later results. It proved the correctness of finite element simulation. Based on this, the author extended the analysis of the model, made comparative analysis by adding different construction to the model, for instance,whether put the steel mesh or not, put the steel mesh or wood joists. The results showed that the sheer stiffness has been improved significantly after increasing the structure measures to the wall.On the basis of the experimental study and the Finite Element Analysis, the author came up with the simplified formula of the lateral stiffness K. As expected,the result figured from the K is not far from the experiment’s outcome.The author justified the feasibility of the formula K by observing the difference between the charts and the experiment’s result.