TDI-Brooks develops automatic miniature vane shear testing device

(WO) – TDI-Brooks announced the successful development and testing of a new instrument, the Auto-Minivane. The Auto-Minivane instrument is a self-contained, stand-alone miniature vane shear testing device that can be used in a 0.5 m vertical-stroke format by an onshore or offshore laboratory. The 1-m-stroke format can be mounted onto a box corer at sea to measure soil strength deep into the box core soil sample.

The new Auto-Minivane accurately and precisely measures the undrained shear strength of very soft to stiff saturated fine-grained clayey soils in an automated process, including its ability to automatically advance down a series of preset depths for successive soil measurements in an acquired box core. The tool conforms to ASTM D4648/D4648M-16, and its measurements consistently match those generated with the conventional mechanical tools.

Its operation removes all the unwanted operator-error and operator differences from the tests, allowing much better repeatability of results, as well as increased precision and accuracy. It can also be programmed to perform residual strength tests at each depth where an undrained shear strength test is performed.