Issue 76

W. Hanini et alii, Fracture and Structural Integrity, 76 (2026) 183-211; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.76.12

Numerical assessment of the seismic vulnerability of the historical earthen remains of the Mansourah enclosure (Tlemcen, Algeria): influence of geometry and identification of critical damage zones

Hanini Walid, Boumechra Nadir EOLE research laboratory, Faculty of Technology, University of Tlemcen, Algeria haniniwalid@gmail.com, http://orcid.org/0000-0001-2345-6789 n_boumechra@yahoo.fr, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2345-6790

Citation: Hanini, W., Boumechra, N., Numerical assessment of the seismic vulnerability of the historical earthen remains of the Mansourah enclosure (Tlemcen, Algeria): influence of geometry and identification of critical damage zones, Fracture and Structural Integrity, 76 (2026) 183-211.

Received: 22.11.2025 Accepted: 30.01.2026 Published: 15.02.2026 Issue: 04.2026

Copyright: © 2026 This is an open access article under the terms of the CC-BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

K EYWORDS . Rammed Earth, Nonlinear behavior, critical zones, damage, Seismic vulnerability, Drucker–Prager criterion.

I NTRODUCTION

owadays, more than half of the world's population lives in earthen buildings. Many of these buildings are located in France, Germany, Spain, North Africa, Australia, North and South America, and Asia, particularly China, Japan, and some other regions [1]. Rammed Earth (RE) is a basic building material that has been widely used in many regions around the world for several centuries. The RE construction technique consists of superimposing layers of moistened and compacted raw earth inside a formwork. It should be noted that the main binder used in traditional unstabilized RE is clay. Subsequently, with industrialization, new modern RE, known as stabilized, were developed by adding other binders, such as cement, N

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