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DESIGN AND CALIBRATION OF NEWCASTLE DILATOMETER

3.1 INTRODUCTION

The need for the development of the Newcastle flat rigid dilatometer has been described
in Chapter-1. A research version of the same for in-situ testing (the research Newcastle
flat rigid dilatometer (R-NDMT)) was designed. A need was realized to develop first a
laboratory version of the R-NDMT (i.e. the LDMT) with the objectives to:

(a) Discover any drawbacks in the design and develop improvements for the field
version.

(b) Check how the designed system works by testing a variety of soils in laboratory
conditions. Times New Roman
(c) Establish a test procedure for the field version. Size 12 pt
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(d) Develop correlations between the pressure-displacement curve and the soil
properties (to be used for the field version data analysis, Chapters 5 and 8) and
compare them with those for the Marchetti dilatometer.

This chapter presents design objectives of the Newcastle dilatometer followed by key
design features of both the LDMT and R-NDMT along with different calibrations
required. It also describes other components required to make them operational.
Necessary design work is appended to this thesis as Appendix-A. The working drawings
1st Level
Heading for the R-NDMT are appended as Appendix-B and those for the components of the LDMT
Font size 12 that are different to the R-NDMT are presented as Appendix-C.
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UPPER 3.2 DESIGN OBJECTIVES OF NEWCASTLE DMT
CASE
Leave two The Marchetti dilatometer (MDMT), though simple and a quick source of obtaining
Lines above engineering and physical properties of soils, has some limitations, as discussed in
Leave one Chapter-2, article 2.4.2. The R-NDMT has been developed to overcome those limitations.
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Number Figure 3.15 shows two different views of the R-NDMT probe. The blade (1 in Figures
aligned to 3.15 and 3.16) dimensions are the same as those of the Marchetti dilatometer so
the left and
remoulding during insertion is the same for similar soils. It is 15 mm deep, 96 mm wide
text of
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3.70 cm CHAPTER-3 Italic DESIGN AND CALIBRATION OF NEWCASTLE
DILATOMETERS

and 170 mm long and made from stainless steel. Design details of the pore pressure cell,
porous stone, piston and the cover plate are given in sections A1.6, A1.7, A1.8 and A1.9 2.54 cm
3.17 cm respectively (Appendix-A).

170 mm Blade (1)

cone rod connection (5)
96 mm

Porous stone (3) Cover plate (4)

50 mm Piston  60 mm (2)
(details in Fig. 3.3)
15 mm

Figure 3.15 The research Newcastle flat rigid dilatometer (R-NDMT)

3.9 MECHANISM OF THE R-NDMT PISTON

3.9.1 Working Mechanism

3.9.1.1 The Piston (Avoid this third level heading number, you may write just The
Piston without 3.9.1.1)
The working mechanism of the piston is shown in a magnified view of the piston section
in Figure 3.??.
The working mechanism of the piston is shown in a magnified view of the piston section
in Figure 3.??.

The working mechanism of the piston is shown in a magnified view of the piston section
in Figure 3.??.
 CHAPTER-3 DESIGN AND CALIBRATION OF NEWCASTLE
DILATOMETERS

2.54 cm
CHAPTER-3 DESIGN AND CALIBRATION OF NEWCASTLE
DILATOMETERS

Examples on references in the text, equation and Table

A more direct, but time consuming, approach to estimate Ko with the MDMT is by using it
as a total stress cell to measure the in-situ horizontal stress, ho (Lutenegger, 1990). The
dissipation tests of the po reading show a comparable response with the logarithm of time
(Powell & Uglow, 1988a; Roque et al., 1988; Marchetti & Totani, 1989; Miller &
Lutenegger, 1997). Alternatively, ho can be estimated by reading po, p1 and p2 in
repetitive sequence with time during dissipation till a lower final equilibrium value of po
is obtained (Powell et al., 1988a; Robertson et al., 1988), and this may be close to ho of
the soil deposit (Mayne & Martin, 1998).

Schmertmann (1983) proposed the following equation for estimating Ko of uncemented

sands:

40  23K D  86 K D (1  sin  ax
 )  152(1  sin  ax
 )  717(1  sin  ax
 )2
Ko 
192  717(1  sin  ax )

2.16

where,

KD = dilatometer horizontal stress index

With ED and Poisson’s ratio  known, Young’s modulus E can be determined from
equation 2.21. Table 2.4 provides a general range of Poisson’s ratio  for different soils.
For both sand and clay, Marchetti (1997) also correlated drained elastic modulus E with
constrained modulus determined from the MDMT (article 2.8.6) by the following
equation:

Table 2.4 General range for Poisson’s ratio  (After Bowles, 1996)
Type of soil 
Clay, saturated 0.4 - 0.5
Clay, unsaturated 0.1 - 0.3
Sandy clay 0.2 - 0.3
Silt 0.3 - 0.35
Sand, gravelly sand, 0.1 - 1.00
commonly used 0.3 - 0.4
Rock 0.1 - 0.4*
Loess 0.1 - 0.3
CHAPTER-3 DESIGN AND CALIBRATION OF NEWCASTLE
DILATOMETERS

* (Depends somewhat on type of rock)