Characterization of Earth Used in Earth Construction Materials

The objective of this chapter is to present the physical, geotechnical, chemical and mineralogical characterization techniques used to characterize the raw material (earth and mineral addition, such as sand and gravel) contained in the earth materials manufactured with different techniques: earth bricks, rammed earth or cob. This chapter will be divided into 6 sections. The first will present the method used to find the references considered in this state of the art and we will carry out a general qualitative analysis of these references. The other sections will deal respectively with granular, geotechnical, chemical and mineralogical characteristics and, finally, the last part will be dedicated to field tests.