Geotechnical Calibration Chamber
The geotechnical calibration chamber is a system able to reproduce in laboratory the in-situ effective stress state of a specific soil volume at 1:1 scale.
The apparatus is composed by cylindric chamber (diameter 120 cm and height 150 cm) that can be loaded vertically and laterally. The soil sample is reconstructed inside the chamber following specific parameters of grain size and relative density. The sample is then consolidated at a stress state corresponding to the in-situ stress state at a certain depth. The chamber can apply independent levels of lateral and vertical confining stresses, thus simulating isotropic or anisotropic confining conditions.
The sample can be provided with several sensors, and the chamber dimensions are sufficiently large and controlled to assure the significance of resulting data. Geotechnical tests can be executed inside the chamber using the same equipments and procedures applied in-situ for penetrometer, dilatometer and pressurementer tests (CPT, CPTU, DMT, SBPM, CH DH, PLT).
This facility can be used to:
- calibrate conceptual and constitutive models
- define correlations between tests results and geotechnical parameters
- verify and develop geotechnical instrumentation for in-situ testing
