Civil Engineering Research/Report

The independent study will be on the modification and instrumentation of direct shear device. You are required to modify the existing device such that it performs better.

The piston load will be applied from the above instead of the bottom so that the sand particles will not drop into the slit between the loading plate and the shear box. Submit a plan of the modification within a month (Jan 23 2004). Possible scenario is to keep the lower box moving horizontally on the existing rails (no rotation is allowed).

Introduce an additional normal force transducer.
The reading from this load transducer will be used for feedback control of the normal force through a E-P transducer
(do you know that normal force changes during shearing? you will see it only if normal force is measured)

- use as much as possible existing features