Abstract

HENRY, Ramos,  and  PAULINA, Viera,. Characterization of Straw Panels and their Structural Evaluation in a Three-Story Building. Rev Politéc. (Quito) [online]. 2025, vol.55, n.1, pp.29-40. ISSN 2477-8990.  https://doi.org/10.33333/rp.vol55n1.03.

The current climate and energy crisis has highlighted the importance of research aimed at finding more efficient and less polluting alternatives to meet the needs of humanity. Housing construction is one of these. Through procedures established in the IRC residential strawbale construction code and ASTM standards, this work deals with the characterization of load-bearing panels made of strawbale, wood moldings and a light plaster. With the objective of being used as a structure in thermally insulated and structurally safe buildings. The mechanical properties of the panels were determined by performing tests such as axial compression and diagonal tension. With these data, a computational model of a 3-story building was created, where their use is proposed, due to the advantages of energy efficiency that these buildings provide by the presence of straw. It is obtained that the panels have a compressive and shear strength of 5.92 MPa and 0.38 MPa respectively, with a modulus of elasticity of 424.08 MPa and shear stiffness of 157.11 MPa. Through the analysis of the building model, it is concluded that the studied prefabricated materials can be safely used for the assembly of medium-rise buildings, since they present inelastic drifts of less than 1% and an adequate seismic resistant behavior. These results allow us to anticipate that it is possible to use these less polluting materials for the construction of houses that promote sustainability.

Keywords : Straw; compression; tension; prefabrication.

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