Soil and Rock Mechanics Testing Laboratories

The Soil and Rock Mechanics Testing Laboratories are hosted in the Davis Hall and Richmond Field Station. These Laboratories are known for the outstanding research output spanning many decades and include commercial as well as prototype, state-of-the-art testing systems used for testing soils and rocks.

Testing capabilities include:

• A wide range of triaxial equipment in sizes up to 90 cm diameter
• A 12" (300 mm) diameter cyclic simple shear device. Click here for more information
• Advanced triaxial and consolidation testing systems optimized for a variety of static and dynamic property evaluations
• One and two-directional cyclic simple shear and torsional shear equipment
• A scale-model testing laboratory equipped for both static and dynamic testing model studies
• Specialized equipment for coupled flow experiments
• X-ray diffraction equipment and scanning electron microscope
• 1-million pound stiff load frame with 20 ksi temperature-controlled triaxial chambers for deformation and pore pressure measurements on rocks
• direct shear machines for tests on rock joints as large as 45 by 20 cm in area
• A suite of conventional and experimental equipment for performing in-situ field tests to measure soil properties
• Specialized high-speed high resolution digitizer, network analyzer, and other equipment for building, calibrating, and using acoustic emission sensors