Development of Automated Laboratory based soil tester for qualification of deepsea in-situ soil tester

This paper presents the design and development of laboratory based in-situ soil tester to validate the sub-sea in-situ soil tester used to measure various parameters like bearing and shear strength of soil/bentonite samples. It is important to use an accurate & high resolution laboratory in-situ soil tester to calibrate the deep sea in-situ soil tester. The laboratory based soil tester has been designed with a high accuracy and resolution sensor. The laboratory based in-situ soil tester consists of various shear and bearing measurement sensors, linear and rotary actuators and drive units with feedback system. A micro controller based embedded electronics system is developed for acquiring the sensor signals, processing, displaying, and storing the data with date and time information for histogram. The system also has a PC interface to control, download and monitor the data in real time. The International standards for geotechnical engineering like American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), British Standard (BS) and Indian Standards (IS) were referred to design the Automated Laboratory based soil tester to attain these standards for soil strength measurement.