Adobe structures are those composed of dried soil blocks which are mainly used for dwellings of some developing countries. Eighty percent of the killed persons by earthquakes in the world are due to collapse of the adobe structure.

From a view point that fundamental aspects of reinforcement in the adobe structure are required to mitigate earthquake disaster, the authors,who were or are engaged in the international earthquake engineering training, have carried out static tests of adobe specimens. Selection of domestic soils for specimens, method to cast mixed soil to a mold and construction method of adobe wall were done through discussions with the participants of the earthquake engineering course and information exchange with overseas researchers.

The objectives of the experiments are to carry out monotonic lateral test of half-scale adobe walls with and without reinforcement, to compare the mechanical behavior of two different walls and to clarify fundamental effects of reinforcement in the adobe structure. They adopted steel bars as reinforcement instead of local materials such as bamboo and cane,because they would like to measure stress and strains of the reinforcement material.