Design of a piezovibrocone and calibration chamber

This paper presents the details of indigenous development of the piezovibrocone and calibration chamber. The developed cone has a cylindrical friction sleeve of $150cm^2$ surface area, capped with a $60^{\circ}$ apex angle conical tip of $15cm^2$ cross sectional area. It has a hydraulic shaker, coupled to the cone penetrometer with a linear displacement unit. The hydraulic shaker can produce cyclic load in different types of wave forms (sine, Hover sine, triangular, rectangular and external wave) at a range of frequency 1-10 Hz with maximum amplitude of 10 cm. The piezovibrocone can be driven at the standard rate of 2 cm/sec using a loading unit of 10 ton capacity. The calibration chamber is of size $2m{\times}2m{\times}2m$. The sides of the chamber and the top as well as the bottom portions are rigid. It has a provision to apply confining pressure (to a maximum value of $4kg/cm^2$) through the flexible rubber membrane inlined with the side walls of the calibration chamber. The preliminary static as well as dynamic cone penetration tests have been done sand in the calibration chamber. From the experimental results, an attempt has been made to classify the soil based on friction ratio ($f_R$) and the cone tip resistance ($q_c$).