Evaluation of alker (adobe with gypsum additive) technology in terms of speed and quality in industrialization

The earth construction method, which has reached by today from the history of humanity, developed in Anatolia named as Mudbrick -also known as Kerpiç adobe- after addition of various additive materials. The importance of a mudbrick style structure is significantly high in Anatolian and Worldwide Architectural Cultures. A mudbrick material creates healthy indoor climates for humanity with its physical properties. However, he widespread use of Concrete and Steel materials, which has been largely supported by Global Industry, has led to look towards adobe from the sector lately. The reason behind the growth of demand on Concrete and Steel materials is the continuous supply of fast and improved materials. On the contrary to this demand, todays traditional mudbrick production is time taking. In order to speed up construction period and build up durability of the material and earth quake resistance construction various researches has been conducted. A Traditional mudbrick, is a construction material obtained by adding straw to the soil and shaping it in a mold. Production processes take too long and cannot solve today's construction needs. As a result of the researches that started with the aim of increasing the mudbrick durability against time in 1980 Istanbul Technical University has obtained, by adding gypsum and lime material into the mudbrick mortar a construction material called Alker. Alker technology is fast and had higher quality. It cannot get an enough share as much as concrete and steel consisted materials do from the construction sector. In this study, it is considered to develop construction methods based on using Alker material in construction. So as to achieve reduced production time and produce structures researches were carried out with a Shotcrete machine. Series of experiments has organized for Alker wall construction decisions with the "Shotcrete" machine used in concrete technology. In this context, primarily, the Shotcrete machine and the type of compressor used together were determined, the material properties of the mixture were defined and the application was tested with different operators with the Shotcrete machine. The easy usage of the shotcrete machine is the determination of the amount of water in the nozzle. In order to create the ease of use of the machine by inexperienced or less experienced operators and to get efficiency with Shotcrete machine on earth construction, modification suggestions and inferences were made.