ABSTRACT
In Western countries there has been an increasing interest in adobe constructions, especially for sustainability and comfort reasons. Some billion people live in earth houses all over the world, also in seismic areas. The seismic behaviour of adobe constructions was numerically modelled through the Equivalent Frame method. The static and seismic behaviour of simple adobe buildings was studied with the code RAN and compared with that of low strength masonry buildings. Sardinia is the place in Italy where earth constructions are more widespread, with an important building tradition dating many centuries ago due to the lack of other building materials in the alluvial plain of Campidano. Earth constructions are built in Sardinia especially for comfort and sustainability reasons. For the Italian code in Sardinia, new buildings are to be checked for the seismic action, and existing buildings to be reused with important structural modifications and changes of the loading conditions.
