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Straw bale house survives violent shaking at earthquake lab
Date:4/3/2009

RENO, Nev. It huffed and puffed, but the 82-ton-force, earthquake-simulation shake table could not knock down the straw house designed and built by University of Nevada, Reno alumna and civil engineer Darcey Donovan.

The full-scale, 14-by-14-foot straw house, complete with gravel foundation and clay plaster walls, the way she builds them in Pakistan, was subjected to 200 percent more acceleration/shaking than was recorded at the 1994 Northridge, Calif. earthquake, the largest measured ground acceleration in the world. After a series of seven increasingly forceful tests, in the final powerful test the house shook and swayed violently, cracked at the seams and sent out a small cloud of dust and straw...and remained standing.

Donovan oversaw the successful series of seismic tests run March 27 at the University's world-renowned Large-Scale Structures Laboratory. She was testing her innovative design for straw bale houses she has been building since 2006 throughout the northwest frontier provinces of Pakistan, in the foothills of the Himalayas between Pakistani tribal areas and Kashmir. Her design uses bales as structural and load-bearing components rather than just insulation as in other straw-bale designs.

"We're very pleased with the results," said Donovan, founder/CEO of the non-profit Pakistan Straw Bale and Appropriate Building (PAKSBAB) organization. "The house performed exceptionally well and survived 0.82g (0.82 times the acceleration of gravity) and twice the acceleration of the Northridge quake. The Geological Survey of Pakistan estimates the 2005 Kashmir earthquake to have had peak ground accelerations in the range of 0.3 to 0.6g.

Most people were killed and injured in that October 2005 earthquake as they slept when their poorly built houses collapsed on top of them. The magnitude 7.6 earthquake killed 100,000 people and left 3.3 million homeless or living in tents.

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Contact: Mike Wolterbeek
awolterbeek@unr.edu
University of Nevada, Reno
Source:Eurekalert  

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Straw bale house survives violent shaking at earthquake lab
Straw bale house survives violent shaking at earthquake lab
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