Composite building materials: Thermal and mechanical performances of samples realized with hay and natural resins

© 2017 by the authors. Recent years have seen an increasing public interest in issues related to energy saving and environmental pollution reduction in the building sector. As a result, many directives have been issued, the most important being the Directive 2010/31/EU (EPBD Recast) on the energy performance of buildings, which requires that "Member States shall ensure that by 31 December 2020 all new buildings are nearly zero-energy buildings". This goal can be obtained not only by reducing energy demand for heating and cooling, but also, for example, by improving building envelope performances. In this work, a first analysis of the thermal and structural behaviour of a biocomposite material, constituted by a natural resin (rosin) and vegetal fibres (hay), has been performed, with particular attention to the share of fibres and the granulometry in the mixture. The biocomposite has shown both good insulation properties and mechanical resistance. However, the results show that further analyses should be performed on the optimisation of the samples' preparation process.