• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
• /
• v.26 no.6C
• /
• pp.377-384
• /
• 2006

Theoretical and experimental study of the unconfined penetration (UP) test was conducted to suggest a new test method (referred to as IUP, Improved Unconfined Penetration) for determination of the tensile strength of compacted sand-bentonite mixtures. The tensile strength of compacted mixtures can be calculated from limit analysis based on the theory of perfect plasticity. The measurement errors in new test method were reduced by improving the UP device. Preliminary experiment results indicate that the tensile strength increases with increasing the disk size, loading rate and pH level. In addition, the disk diameter with 25.4 mm and the loading rate with 0.5%/min~1%/min are most suitable condition for the IUP test. The reliability of IPU test was verified by through the fact that good agreement between the IUP and conventional split tensile test results is observed.