Large & Extra Large Type Direct Shear Testing Machine

The test covers the determination of consolidated drained shear strength of a soil material in direct shear. The machine is ideal for determining shear resistance of soil-geosynthetic / geomembrans by direct shear.

UTS-2160 Automatic Direct / Residual Shear Test Machine is motorized and floor mounted. The total vertical load on the specimen can reach up to 100 kN.

UTS-2160 accepts 300, 450, 600 mm square shearbox assemblies. All shearbox assemblies are designed to contain water that surrounds the specimen. The Assemblies consist of a shear box with a rigid wall square or round hole complete with a vertical loading pad two retaining plates (one is smooth, the other is perforated)

The shear machines are driven by high resolution servomotor and gear box assembly. Speed range is fully stepless variable over the range 0.00001 to 9.99999 mm/min for both direction (shear and return). After test the return speed is 10 mm/min. 100 kN load cell is used for load measurement. 200 x 0.01 mm sensitivity linear potentiometric transducers are used for vertical and horizontal displacement measurements. Horizontal Displacement limits are controlled by limit switches. 

Standards

BS 1377-7; ASTM D 6243; EN ISO 12957

Display Unit and Controller

U-TouchPro Graphic Display & Control Unit is used for monitoring horizontal load, vertical load and displacement values. All test parameters such as speed, failure condition etc. Can be defined through this interface. The test can be started up and stopped by touch buttons.

The controller has two independent control axes, one for horizontal motion one for vertical motion. The displacement on horizontal motion is measured through external displacement sensor fitted to frame and also through the encoder behind the servo motor. All calibration of sensors can be done easily by entering new points respect to the error.

The software is capable of monitoring all measured values and drawing Shear stress vs Horizontal displacement graph. After three runs with different normal loads, the software calculates the cohesion value “c” and internal friction angle ”φ”  by using the best straight line fit.

User can select 3 different test types:

The machine run with the speed determined by user to the direction of shear and stop when the load decreases.

The machine run with the speed determined by user to the direction of shear and stop when it reaches to the target horizontal displacement value which is also determined by the user at the beginning of the test.

 • The machine run with the speed to the direction of shear, after reaching to the target displacement, returns and finds the exact initial (HOME) position, waits for the dissipation of excess pore pressure and starts to the same procedure again. User can create testing scenarios by determining all the parameters of this multi-reversal shearing test such as test speed, return speed, displacement target, standby time, and cycle number.

 • 4 analog channels for vertical load cell, vertical displacement, horizontal load and horizontal displacement transducer (one for each)

• 1/65000 points resolution per channel

• 1000 data per second sample rate for each channel. (In the software filtered as 10Hz)

• Ethernet connecting for computer interface

• 240x320 resolution 65535 color TFT-LCD industrial touchscreen

• Free of charge PC software for the test control and advanced report  generation

The Utest Direct and Residual Shear Software is  developed according to BS 1377-7; ASTM D 6243; EN ISO 12957 standards to be used with UTS-2160 machine. Direct residual and shear software consist of two sections. First section is used for the consolidation of the sample prior to shear. The software is capable of making three different types of test. The first type of the tests is to move the machine till a load failure happens. On the second type of test the user can set a horizontal displacement and the test will continue till the machine reaches set value. On the last type of test, the machine can be configured as going to a preset horizontal displacement value and return to home position. The software supports 5 different normal load values in order to calculate cohesion values. Prior to the test normal load value must be entered to the software. The normal stress value would be calculated with respect to normal load and sample size automatically. The software supports both square and round type samples. For both sample shape, stress values can optionally and automatically be calculated as “standard area” and the “corrected area” approach. When the test is completed peak and resilient stress values are recorded. The normal load versus max stress pair is used for calculating the cohesion value and angle. At least 3 loading with different normal loads are required for this property. One can set test speed, axis values etc through the setup of the software. The results can be submitted as a report or can be exported to Microsoft Excel for advanced reanalyze procedures.

UTS-2163 or/and UTS-2164 or/and UTS-2166 shear boxes with accessories should be ordered separately.

The Automatic Direct Residual Shear Test Machine is supplied complete with;

• 2 Load Cell 100 kN
• 2 Linear Potentiometric Displacement Transducer (200x0.01 mm)
• Software