Experimental and FEM Investigation of Cob Walls under Compression

Figure 7

Horizontal strain-vertical strain diagrams for tested walls. On each curve, the point related to the formation of the first capillary cracks and those related to the formation of diffuse cracks are reported. The vertical and horizontal compression strains are computed by averaging the displacements measured by the two vertical and horizontal LVDTs, respectively. Post-peak behaviour (dotted lines) cannot be considered as completely reliable since test was force controlled.