[Cob] Cob Studies: Civil Engineers: U of BC: Materials testing

[drub]

Greetings, Cobers and Cob-wannabies (like me), Cob admirers (me again), and
others,

 

A couple years ago, there was Civil Engineering academic activity at the U
of British Colombia relating to cob.  Memory tells me that it involved the
seismic behavior of cob.  I need to make contact with those folks.

 

I have 2 sons studying Civil Engineering at Santa Clara University.  I have
been polluting my sons with thoughts of, and descriptions of the benefits of
cob for years.  They seem to absorb some of it!  The older son has already
completed a Senior Thesis, in which they designed a bamboo-reinforced cob
home.  The project design was sited in, and designed for, a seismically
active area, Santa Cruz, CA.

 

The older son now has a Materials Science class this term and intends to use
cob for a term project.  I suggested he contact others involved in similar
projects to see if there is a way to leverage from previous work, and
contribute to the previous work, instead of starting "from scratch",
performing the same tasks, again.  I'm trying to help him establish contact
with others who are involved in cob research.

 

So, if you are involved in U of BC, please respond so we can discover if
there is any sanity to my suggestion.  I'll put you together with my son.

 

I would *love* to have cob gain traction in the building codes.  It looks
like the cob formulations present the biggest challenge to that objective.
It must be terribly difficult to standardize cob formulations, since the
core ingredients vary so widely, based on location.  Without standardized
formulations, it would be terribly difficult to quantify performance and
build that data into building codes.  Still worth a try.

 

Most sincerely, David.