Experimental Study on the Physical Properties of Mud Mortar in Comparison with the Conventional Mortars

Mud is a versatile material which finds application in construction industry as mud blocks for wall construction, mud mortar for binding and plastering and as tiles for flooring and roofing. It is universally accepted as an environment friendly and user friendly material for construction from time immemorial. The state of Kerala, where nature imprints its heritage witnessed numerous mud constructions in the form of traditional buildings, ancient palaces and monumental buildings irrespective of the size of the buildings and status of the owners. Yet its utilization as a construction material has come down drastically over a past few decades with the advent of cement and concrete. In a state like Kerala, where there is ample scope for procuring mud, it is high time that its potential as building material has been fully utilized. The potential of mud as a sustainable building material has been overviewed by the same authors in the first phase of investigation. As the second phase experimental work was conducted to compare the properties of mud mortar with conventional mortars so as to check the feasibility of using mud as mortar. The effect of stabilizers such as cow dung, cement and lime on raw mud has been studied in this paper. This paper also checks the effect of fibres on the durability of reinforced mud mortar.