Improved Advanced Laboratory Testing Techniques

Offentlig prosjektsammendrag

A good geotechnical laboratory needs to constantly review its procedures and techniques and to improve them with time. The engineering science related to soil and rock testing is continuously evolving, in terms of methods, instrumentation, automatisation and the effects of environmental factors such as stress conditions, temperature and humidity. At the same time, the exploitation of energy resources (e.g. petroleum, hydrowater, wind) and construction of infrastructure and buildings onshore now occur in more remote areas and on more difficult soils than before. Harsh environments often mean increased reliance on testing in the laboratory. This four-year Skattefunn research project aims to develop new techniques for testing soils, verify the effects of key parameters and improve the interpretation of the soil parameters. The ultimate goal is producing reliable soil parameters with less uncertainty, which shoud lead to more cost-effective founnation solutions. More specifically, the project will develop new equipment and test procedures to: (1) reconstitute representative specimens of soils and (2) understand the behaviour of soils under different stress and volume conditions. Three key equipments used extensively to determine the soil parameters for geotechnical design will be investigated: the triaxial test, the resonant column test, and the simple shear test.