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Direct Shear Test

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Aklilu Opal
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10 views3 pages

Direct Shear Test

Uploaded by

Aklilu Opal
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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1.1.1.

Direct shear test

A direct shear test is a laboratory or field test used by geotechnical engineers to measure
the shear strength properties of soil or rock material, or of discontinuities in soil or rock
masses.

The test is performed on three or four specimens from a relatively undisturbed soil
sample. A specimen is placed in a shear box which has two stacked rings to hold the
sample; the contact between the two rings is at approximately the mid-height of the
sample. A confining stress is applied vertically to the specimen, and the upper ring is
pulled laterally until the sample fails, or through a specified strain. The load applied and
the strain induced is recorded at frequent intervals to determine a stress–strain curve for
each confining stress. Several specimens are tested at varying confining stresses to
determine the shear strength parameters, the soil cohesion (c) and the angle of internal
friction, commonly known as friction angle (phi}). The results of the tests on each
specimen are plotted on a graph with the peak (or residual) stress on the y-axis and the
confining stress on the x-axis. The y-intercept of the curve which fits the test results is the
cohesion, and the slope of the line or curve is the friction angle.

Direct shear tests can be performed under several conditions. The sample is normally
saturated before the test is run, but can be run at the in-situ moisture content. The rate of
strain can be varied to create a test of undrained or drained conditions, depending
whether the strain is applied slowly enough for water in the sample to prevent pore-water
pressure buildup. Direct shear test machine is required to perform the test. The test using
the direct shear machine determinates the consolidated drained shear strength of a soil
material in direct shear.
The advantages of the direct shear test over other shear tests are the simplicity of setup
and equipment used, and the ability to test under differing saturation, drainage, and
consolidation conditions. These advantages have to be weighed against the difficulty of
measuring pore-water pressure when testing in undrained conditions, and possible
spuriously high results from forcing the failure plane to occur in a specific location.

Figure 2-1: Direct Shear Strength Testing Machine, Opal Engineering

1.1.2. Moisture content


Water content or moisture content is the quantity of water contained in a material, such as
soil (called soil moisture), rock, ceramics, fruit, or wood. Water content is used in a wide
range of scientific and technical areas, and is expressed as a ratio, which can range from 0
(completely dry) to the value of the materials' porosity at saturation. It can be given on a
volumetric or mass (gravimetric) basis.

Figure 2-2: Phase Relation Ship

Soil composition by Volume and Mass, by phase: air, water, void (pores filled with water
or air), soil, and total.

1.1.3. Laboratory Compaction tests

There are several types of test which can be used to study the compactive properties of
soils. Because of the importance of compaction in most earth works standard procedures
have been developed. These generally involve compacting soil into a mould at various
moisture contents.

 Standard Compaction Test

Soil is compacted into a mould in 3-5 equal layers, each layer receiving 25 blows of a
hammer of standard weight. The apparatus is shown in Figure 1 below. The energy
(compactive effort) supplied in this test is 595 kJ/m 3. The important dimensions are given
in the following table.

Volume of mould Hammer mass Drop of hammer


1000 cm3 2.5 kg 300 mm

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