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Development of a Field Torsional Direct Shear Test Apparatus

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Abstract

The current study proposes a novel field Torsional Direct Shear Test (TDST) that can measure the field shear strength of soils with particle sizes up to 12.5 mm. TDST apparatus comprises an open cylinder 300 mm in diameter and 90 mm in height. The cylinder has two vanes fixed at 90° to one another at the center. It also has a 25 mm thick circular cover plate, quarter plates covered by the vanes, and a vertical loading column. Here circular cover plate transfers the normal load applied to the loading column, and the torsional load is applied to the loading column using the lever arm. Quarter plates allow the soil to dilate while shearing, enabling the measurement of shear strength under a known, constant applied normal stress. To validate the performance of the TDST apparatus, set up modified, and used in the laboratory large box direct shear test setup. The results of the laboratory TDST setup were compared with those obtained using the laboratory DST. It was found that the angle of internal friction (ϕ) measured using the proposed TDST was nearly identical to that measured using the laboratory DST. In contrast, the cohesion (c) measured using TDST was about 1.2 times greater than that measured using DST. The proposed in situ TDST method does not require a large horizontal force. Instead, as the length of the lever arm increases, the required force to induce torsional stress in soil reduces, making the method much easier to perform than the conventional field DST.

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Data availability

The data supporting the findings of this study will be available upon request.

Abbreviations

TDST:

Torsional Direct Shear Test

DST:

Direct Shear Test

c :

Cohesion

ϕ :

Angle of internal friction

G :

Specific gravity

C u :

Coefficient of uniformity

C c :

Coefficient of curvature

MDD:

Maximum Dry Density

OMC:

Optimum Moisture Content

T :

Torque of moment

τ :

Shear stress

β:

Cadlings constant

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Acknowledgements

The authors express their gratitude to the Vice-chancellor, COEP Technological University (formerly College of Engineering Pune) Pune an,d the Head of the Civil Engineering Department for their valuable financial and technical support, which has greatly contributed to the successful completion of this work. Furthermore, the authors would like to extend their appreciation to the reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions that have significantly enhanced the quality of the paper.

Funding

This work was supported by the R&D department of COEP Tech Pune.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Civil Engineering Department, COEP Technological University, Pune, Maharashtra, 411005, India

    Kakasaheb D. Waghmare & K. K. Tripathi

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  1. Kakasaheb D. Waghmare
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  2. K. K. Tripathi
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Correspondence to Kakasaheb D. Waghmare.

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

The appendix contains some results of TDST. These results were taken before the introduction of quarter plates. When quarter plates were introduced, the results were found quite comparable.

Table 5 indicates that the values of cohesion and angle of internal friction were many variations comparable after the quarter plate was introduced to the TDST apparatus.

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Waghmare, K.D., Tripathi, K.K. Development of a Field Torsional Direct Shear Test Apparatus. Geotech Geol Eng 42, 479–500 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10706-023-02584-5

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