Geotechnical In Situ Testing

George Black

Because geotechnical laboratory testing is often expensive, slow, unavailable, difficult to obtain undisturbed samples or only analysing a very small part of the soil, Black Geotechnical have had a focus on in-situ testing for some time.

The need for higher quality data has driven Black Geotechnical to not only consider traditional in-situ tools such as Dynamic Cone Penetrometers, Standard Penetration Tests and Shear Vanes, but also to utilise Cone Penetration Tests (including Piezocones and mechanical cones), full flow penetrometers, Dilatometer Marchetti Tests and Seismic cones.

The need to determine geotechnical parameters on sites which are impenetrable to drill or cone rigs, and the need to test greater areas of ground, has led to the use of Plate Load Tests, Falling Weight Deflectometer tests, impact compaction deceleration response and settlement tests and finally seismic testing, specifically the measurement of Rayleigh waves with the Continuous Surface Wave System and more recently the Multi-channel Analysis of Surface Waves method.

In this talk Black Geotechnical intend to share their learning experiences with these insitu testing methods and will also show some case histories.

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