Mechanical characteristics of constructive elements from vernacular buildings located along the "Herculia Way"

The “Herculia Way” is a part of the “Francigena Way”, a combination of arterial roads, all dating back to the roman epoch, considered the most important medieval religious pilgrimage route. It connects the north to the south of the Basilicata Region (southern Italy). Along the Herculia Way there are vernacular buildings, often unused, constituting a rural heritage that could represent an additional resource to be exploited for the local development. Some of these rural buildings, currently present, could be restructured by eco-friendly techniques, using the same natural materials in order to respect the local culture, so becoming suitable places also for the exposition and sale of traditional food products and handicrafts. In particular, some buildings, now abandoned, made in the past with “adobe” (sun-dried clay with straw) bricks, were identified through in situ surveys. In order to identify the construction methods of these buildings and the mechanical behaviour of their building material, some laboratory tests on specimens taken from old adobe houses have been conducted. Corresponding compression tests were conducted on new specimens realized with a mix of clay and straw as well, in order to verify the differences between old and new adobe bricks. In both cases, the first results have shown that the compression strength is, in average, about 1 N mm-2. Since the mechanical characteristics of the adobe blocks are strongly influenced by the fibres, some blocks of this composite material with the addition of some other different fibres are going to be realized in order to verify the possibilities of improving their mechanical characteristics.