Transparent soils

Sam’s interest in image-based deformation measurment stems from his PhD (Stanier, 2011), which used transparent soil (Stanier et al., 2012) to analyse the failure mechanisms for various helical plate spacings on a screw pile (Stanier et al., 2013).

Helical screw pile failure mechanisms exposed using image-based deformation measurement and transparent soil. As you can see the direction of loading has no influence on the mechanism. Around a single helix a localised mechanism forms, whereas around multi-helix piles, a cylindrical failure mechanism forms if the spacing \( \left(s\right) \) to diameter \( \left(D\right) \) ratio \( \left(s/D\right) \) is less than 1.5.