This project upgrade a soil mechanics laboratory, utilizes modern data acquisition techniques, and constructs a device to demonstrate the flow of seepage water through earth dams. Goals are to enhance student laboratory experience and enable students to use modern data acquisition equipment. The use of modern data acquisition techniques will replace the routine hand reduction of data after testing is completed with observations of real-time plots of data during testing. This rapid feedback will enable students to more easily relate observed behavior with engineering properties derived from test data. Major equipment acquisitions include transducers to enable electronic acquisition of data from existing test equipment, two sets of signal conditioning amplifiers, and two microcomputer-based data acquisition systems to collect, reduce, and display data during testing. Experiments to be instrumented include unconfined and triaxial compression, consolidation, and direct shear tests. This project is significant because it gives students experience with modern data acquisition techniques and reduces the monotonous hand collection of data during testing, freeing the students to direct more attention to specimen behavior and corresponding diagrams of test results during laboratory periods.
