[GSBN] penetration of plaster in bales...

[contact at lamaisonenpaille.com]

Hello,

Carolines email made me remember a thought that I intended to share with 
you all :

I've been diving deep (again and again) in Bruce's book and its 
'outragous' proposition that plaster can be structural.
I have no structural ingeneer reputation to keep up, so I hearby boldly 
share my thoughts (be they brilliantly ignorant and/or ignorantly 
brilliant):

- It's the different qualities of the plaster and reinforcing that 
define its structural capacities.
- It's the adhésion of the plaster to the bales that alow the plaster to 
be supported by the bales (and therefore its force mobilised).
- Plaster is sensitive to wear, and using it to hold up a builiding 
scares of a lot of people (here in France I imagine some 'respectful 
engineers' sharpening the guillotine for me for daring to translate and 
publish such an idea in French)
- some plastering techniques are able to shoot plaster up to 5 cm (2'') 
into a dense bale wall as David Eisenberg told me was done for the wall 
made for the thermal testing at Oak Ridge.

So I figured that if one would no longer call it 'plaster' but 'mortar' 
(because IN the bales and not ON it) one might avoid creating conflicts 
with 'the establishment' that condider 'stuctural plaster' blasfemy. 
Would we then not obtain the most solid sb wall one could make (not 
goin' into the details of densenes of the bales, precompression etc.)?

France happens to be a place that has a plaster adherence testing 'hot 
shots'. So I'm wondering if those of you who have allready done testing 
would have suggestions on what you'd like to see tested in this field. 
Then, when 'they' come at me I might be able to avoid the guilotine and 
spark interesting testing in that field.

Any suggestions?

André - getting nervous - de Bouter