Strength Tests

ESG possess the most extensive laboratory facilities in the business, ensuring that our highly skilled site investigations are backed up by suberb analytical services. For example, we have the largest commercial effective stress testing facilities in Europe.

Many different types of soil can be analysed in our UKAS accredited geotechnical testing laboratories for their strength properties. These include a range of triaxial, vane and shear tests including:

Unconsolidated Undrained Triaxial (UU)

Undisturbed or recompacted materials can be tested as single, multistage or multiple specimens

Consolidated Undrained Triaxial (CU)/Consolidated Drained Triaxial (CD)

Effective stress triaxial testing to various failure criteria is available including peak deviator stress (CU/CD), peak stress ratio (CU), constant shear stress and pore pressure (CU) and constant shear stress and volume (CD). 

Laboratory Vane

For a more accurate result compared to hand held in situ methods, our laboratory-based vane test is ideal for testing soft to firm cohesive samples to BS1377

Small/Large Shearbox

A range of tests are available for undisturbed specimen(s) or those recompacted from disturbed samples or loosely poured cohesionless soils. Sizes of shearbox range from 60mm square to 100mm square for a small shearbox or a nominally 300mm square large shearbox.

Ring Shear

Ring shear tests are provided to determine the 'Ultimate' residual angle of shearing resistance using the conventional Bromhead Ring Shear apparatus.