In this lab we conduct experiments to investigate strength characteristics of soil and rubble materials and to develop new-type facilities for fishing ports.

(Devices) Centrifuge Coarse grain material test apparatus High pressure triaxial test apparatus Middle pressure triaxial test apparatus

(Centrifuge) Radius of rotating frame 3.0m Rotation speed 0-225 r.p.m. Centrifugal acceleration 0-150G

Soil is deformed by an external load. Soil deformation consists of two phase materials, that is, granular material and pore-water. In some cases soil exhibits a large deformation for a short time, but in another cases several decades are necessary. If a phenomenon that takes many years to occur can be reappearanced in a short time, we can do a lot of experiments and can investigate soil properties in detail. It is possible to realize such merits by centrifuge. Centrifuge is a machine that rotate a soil container at high speed and soil is put in a large acceleration field. If acceleraion is a hundred times of gravitational accerelation and modeling scale is one-hundredth, a phenomenon can be reappearanced accurately for only one-ten thousandth of the necessary time for prototype following a law of similarity.

Bearing capacity tests using centrifuge We are now doing experiments to develop new-type foundations for fishing ports and other coastal structures, using centrifuge. A container is filled with caolin clay and set to centrifuge. A miniature foundation is set on clay. The foundation is loaded vertically and/or horizontally while movement and pressure distribution of foundation are measured.

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