Effect of Slenderness Ratio of the Specimen on Resonant Column Test Results

What is it about?

To examine the influence of the slenderness ratio (L/d) of the specimen, resonant column (RC) tests were conducted on dry sand specimens by using three different values of L/d, namely, 2, 3 and 4, keeping the same diameter (d = 50 mm) to measure the shear moduli and material damping For the sake of the comparison, bender elements (BE) tests were also performed to examine the effect of L/d on the shear moduli. The current experimental findings reveals that the measured shear moduli of the specimens become higher for slender specimen. On the other hand, the damping values were found to be only marginally affected with the changes in L/d. The BE tests, on the other hand, hardly illustrate any variation in shear moduli with the changes in L/d. The present study reveals that it will be more appropriate to use a slenderness ratio equal to 4 rather than 2 especially when testing at isotropic confining pressure ≥ 500 kPa.

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