Stabilised rammed earth: a case study in Western Australia

The following research has been undertaken in collaboration with ‘Engineers Without Borders’, with the aim of investigating procedures and materials to reduce the cost of housing construction for local indigenous communities on the Dampier Peninsula, a remote area in the north of Western Australia. This paper shows the criteria and the logic that lead to identifying cement-stabilised rammed earth as a viable alternative to the standard typologies (mainly steel-framed houses) in remote areas of Australia. To overcome the limits generated by the lack of proper Australian standards recommendations in rammed-earth construction, the suitability of the soil available in situ has been experimentally investigated. The unconfined compressive strength for different soils and different cement contents has been studied. In addition, the accelerated erosion test has been carried out. Even though the soil collected in situ has been shown to be a suitable construction material, the competitiveness and wide-ranging benefits of rammed earth are undermined by the lack of more comprehensive studies on this alternative building technique.