Geotechnical Engineering Laboratory
The GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING Laboratory is equipped with facilities to carry out many types of tests on soils. These include testing of a large range of sample sizes for compressibility, shear strength and drainage properties. Basic equipment for soil dynamics field and laboratory experiments, including the resonant column apparatus, are also available. Electronic measuring devices for stress, strain and pore water pressure complement several data acquisition systems. The laboratory also has several non-destructive density and moisture measurement devices based on nuclear radiation for field and laboratory use. Major equipment for soft clay engineering includes ring shear apparatus, automatic stress path control system for triaxial testing and hydrocone consolidation cell.
Centrifuge modelling is becoming increasingly used as a technique for studying geotechnical problems. With this approach, data from reduced-scale centrifuge models can be scaled up to prototype values in a rigorous and self-consistent manner. A 2m-radius centrifuge capable of carrying a maximum payload of 400kg and a maximum g-level of 200 has been designed, fabricated locally and installed in the Geotechnical Centrifuge laboratory. This facility enables many locally relevant field problems to be studied under laboratory-controlled conditions.
