Virginia Tech®home
Sesquicentennial website

Triaxial Testing

The Geotechnical Laboratory at Virginia Tech has the capability of performing a wide variety of triaxial tests. With more than 20 triaxial stations including manual setups and fully automated configurations, the laboratory is capable of performing common triaxial tests like isotropically and anisotropically consolidated triaxial tests as well as more specialized tests like ko-consolidation, low stress, stress path, tension, among other triaxial tests.  Shear wave velocity measurements can be performed in any of the aforementioned tests by the use of bender elements at the top and bottom platens. The low stress triaxial tests are performed using effective stress transducer that increase the resolution of the measurements to levels not possible with any other type of sensors. Two of the fully automated stations use silicone oil and are capable of having an internal load cell. Also our lab has the capability of having strain gauges mounted in the sample for localized strain measurements.

TruePath Fully Automated Triaxial

The Geotechnical Laboratory at Virginia Tech has over 10 fully automated triaxial setup manufactured by GEOTAC. The TruePath Automated Stress Path System is GEOTAC’s most advanced system incorporating state of the art data acquisition and feedback control. It is a computer controlled triaxial testing system capable of consolidating and shearing soil specimens along specified stress paths. A TruePath system consists of a load frame, two DigiFlow pressure volume actuators (flow pumps), and a high-resolution analog data acquisition system, all connected to a computer through TestNet. The DigiFlow pressure volume actuators generate and control pressures up to 44,000 psf and flow rates ranging from 25 ml/min to 0.000025 ml/min. The system also includes one or two load cells (external and internal), one deformation sensor, three pressure sensors, and a temperature sensor.

For cyclic triaxial please click here.