Soil Preparation and Sample Extraction

The Geotechnical Laboratory at Virginia Tech has the capability of handling both undisturbed and remolded samples. For the undisturbed samples, a Shelby tube sample ejector allows undisturbed samples to be extracted with minimal disturbance. A variety of trimming devices are available to properly trim test specimens for the different types of tests offered.

For remolded samples, the soils can be processed using a wide variety of sieves, using blenders, or ball-milling procedures. After the soil sample is processed, it can be consolidated to a given pressure using one of the two available batch consolidometers. This will allow samples to be trimmed and tested in any of the devices available in the lab.

Compacted test specimens can be prepared using a Harvard miniature compactor, or some the other mechanical compactors available or trimmed from a sample compacted in a Proctor mold.