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This paper explores the thermal performance of the Global Earthship design. Earthship is an autonomous earth-sheltered home utilising passive solar principles. Hourly monitoring data of the indoor temperature in such a building in Taos, New Mexico, were used to calibrate a simulation model of the building. Using the calibrated model, the performance of this design is investigated in other locations: Paris, Albacete, Seville, Valladolid, and London. The results show that the Global Earthship is able to provide thermal comfort without heating and cooling provided there is adequate solar irradiance but where overcast conditions prevail, a small amount of backup heating is necessary. The study also finds that the ground temperature has a large influence on indoor air temperature and indicates the need for further research in simulating Earthship designs.

This paper presents a sensitivity analysis that explores the impact of design and operational factors on the performance of 'earth tubes' as a 'passive' cooling and heating strategy built into an Earthship dwelling located in South Australia. Earth tubes are pipes buried underground acting as heat exchangers to deliver fresh air to the internal spaces, which is cooled in summer and warmed in winter. The results show that the air flow and temperature in the earth tubes was sensitive to how the dwelling was being operated. Through simulations, the ideal scenarios of operating the dwelling in summer and winter in this location as well as in the climate where the Earthship concept was invented, i.e. Taos, New Mexico, are reported. Lessons learned from the study will help those who consider implementing earth tubes in their buildings.

The reuse of end-of-life (EOL) tyres as earth reinforcement materials in civil engineering projects have been studied for decades. Entire EOL tyres infilled with compacted soil can form segmental tyre encased soil elements (TESEs) with considerable load-bearing capacity. The TESEs can be used to construct structures like low-rise buildings, railway foundations and geotechnical structures. One of the most important aspects of TESE systems, i.e., the shearing interaction between neighbouring units is not yet well understood. In this study, thirty-six laboratory tests have been conducted to investigate the response of TESEs under intercourse shear actions. This was followed by a supply chain environment and economic analysis to investigate the acceptability of the system. The results revealed that the type of encased soil had more effect on the interface interactions between courses of TESEs compared to the TESEs’ construction pattern. It was also found that the frictional coefficient could be increased by either using coarse and angular aggregates as the encased soil or reducing the amount of the encased soil to form a high portion of rubber-to-rubber contact at the composite interface. Supply chain environment and economic analysis revealed that using entire tyres as construction materials has low CO2 emission and considerable economic benefits.