Soil Mechanics Laboratory

The Soil Mechanics Laboratory provides hands-on experience to students studying soil mechanics and foundation engineering. The laboratory equipment supports the simultaneous practice of up to six teams of students and consists of: six consolidation apparatuses, a direct/residual shear apparatus, two California Bearing Ratio (CBR) test machines a triaxial test set for shear strength parameters of granular or cohesive soils, and a 10 kips maximum capacity load frame for unconfined compression test set with digital readout unit and 500 lb capacity load cell. Other standard laboratory equipment is available for carrying out variety of tests for the determination of soil physical properties, permeability, compaction and strength characteristics. In addition, the soil mechanics laboratory is provided with a state of the art data acquisition unit with DS7 testing software which enables 24 hour unsupervised logging; thus reducing the chance of errors possible while taking manual readings.