The Western Australian Chapter of the Australian Geomechanics Society (AGS) provides notice of a course to be held on Laboratory Testing in Geotechnical Engineering. The course describes the various laboratory tests that can be used to obtain design parameters for geotechnical engineering problems; it details advantages and disadvantages of different tests, shows the type and magnitude of errors that can occur and their implications; it discusses, through hands-on computer applications, how to obtain suitable design parameters for a range of applications.
Topics covered
- Overview of laboratory strength and stiffness testing devices
- Sample types, recovery and treatment
- Effects of sampling disturbance
- Test specification
- Equipment, preparation, procedures and corrections
- Interpretation of results
- Errors and limitations
- Comparison of test results with expected behaviour patterns
- Specialised testing
- Rowe cell
- Simple shear and cyclic triaxial
- Interface shear testing
- Shear wave velocity measurement
- Derivation of parameters for FE (Plaxis) constitutive models
- Tutorials on parameter derivation
Course presenters:
The course will be presented by UWA lecturers: Prof. Barry Lehane, Prof. Andy Fourie and Asst/Prof. James Doherty. Each presenter has extensive practical experience of laboratory testing and its application to geotechnical design.
Who should attend ?
Consulting engineers, contractors and project managers who need a better understanding of which design parameters can realistically be obtained from a testing programme, and the source and nature of errors that may occur during testing.