Proposal Development Grants Awarded
March 2, 2020
QuakeCoRE Seminar – 17 April 2020
March 4, 2020
10 am Friday 20 March
| Mark Stringer (University of Canterbury) |
The dynamic response of natural pumiceous deposits
Abstract
Geologically recent volcanic eruptions from the Taupo Volcanic Zone (TVZ) have resulted in the deposition of pumice materials across significant areas on the North Island of New Zealand. In particular, these volcanically derived materials are often encountered on engineering projects in the areas of Hamilton and Tauranga.
Pumiceous soils are problematic from a geotechnical perspective due to their high crushability and low weight. These properties mean that practicing engineers must exercise extreme caution when these soils are encountered on a project, since these soils are not captured in the existing databases used to develop the correlations between parameters of engineering interest and in-situ characterisation techniques.
This presentation will discuss aspects of a collaborative project between the Universities of Canterbury and Auckland, where we have attempted to investigate the response of these soils to cyclic loading. The presentation begins with some of the team-’s discoveries regarding the composition of these soils, as well as recent attempts to improve the way in which these soils may be classified. The discussion will then focus on our efforts to obtain undisturbed samples of pumice rich soils and the behaviours which are observed in the laboratory.
For details on how to join the seminar – return to the 2020 Seminar series home page link
Zoom link
