Lab Report 1

Direct Shear Box Test

CIVN4004 – Geotechnical
Engineering Compiled by Group 7b:
Mateusz Malek 1514229
Susan Mwaniki 1515007
Thando Mkhabela 1529332
Nomcebo Gumpo 1536612
25/08/2020

Description of Problem with normally applied stresses of 50kPa, 100kPa and 150kPa.
From the resulting graphs, parameters of the soil sample, such
The Merriespruit Tailings Dam located in the Free State, as the cohesion coefficient and the friction angle were
South Africa, was used to store by-products from gold mining determined. The friction angle found was then used to
operations. These by-products can be liquid, solid or a slurry determine the factor of safety. This value was used to assess
of fine particles and are collectively known as tailings. the slope stability of the soil found at Merriespruit Tailings
Impoundment structures are used to store tailings, whilst the Dam.
surrounding dam can be made up of granular materials such
as sand. On the night of the 22nd of February 1994, the Approach to the problem
Merriespruit Tailings Dam failed which resulted in several
casualties. This report is based on the shear box test which
was used to evaluate the slope stability of the granular
materials found at the site. The test was performed on loose
and dense soils that were dry and saturated, whilst loaded
β<𝖯. This method therefore does not reap accurate
results for cohesionless soils. Bishop method has in the
past produced reasonable results and the computations
are relatively stable.

Solution

stress(kPa)
Normal stress vs Residual/Peak shear

(kPa)
Figure150 stress:
1: Normal stress Dense soil
vs residual/peak shear stress indense
dense soil
dry (peak)

Shearstress
sample
dense saturated
100

Shear
(peak)
Assumptions: Circular slip surface failure, assumed soil at Normal stress vs Shear stress for Loose loose-dry
dense dry
dam dense thus the lowest friction angle for dense soils was 100 (peak)
50 soil (residual)
used, assumed water table as shown in Figure 3-5. dense saturated (residual)
loose-
saturated (peak) loose-dry (residual)
Testing: 12 Granular samples were tested subject to different 0
stresses, 50kPa, 100kPa and 150kPa. Each stress had four 50 0 50 100 150 200
samples, either loose or dense soil combined with dry or Normal stress(kPa) loose-
saturated conditions. saturated (residual)
Figure 2:0 Normal stress vs residual/peak shear stress in loose soil
1. Weigh out the required mass for sample. 0
sample
50Normal 100 ss (kPa 150 200
2. Put the sample into the prepared shear box The FOS ranged from stre )
and place it onto the loading bench. Table 1: Friction angles
3. Apply the normal load whilst taking recordings with highlighted chosen
angle. Peak φ Residual φ
on the vertical dial gauge. Shear forces develop
Dense-dry 42.20° 42.70°
between the two halves of the shear box due to Dense-saturated 44.90° 38.97°
their relative movement. Loose-dry 37.43° 36.01°
Loose-saturated 32.57° 32.12°
4. Start shear displacement by setting a constant rate
of 40Hz on the shear drive. This approach allows for Figure 3: Scenario
peak and residual shear resistance to be plotted. 1.FOS=1.1775
Take recordings on the horizontal dial gauge. (chosen)
5. Dismantle and clean the equipment.

Choice of friction angle and coefficient of cohesion: The

friction angle was determined using the Mohr-Coulomb
failure equation: 𝑟 = 𝑐 + 𝜎𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑛𝜑 . When determining the
peak and residual shear stresses, the horizontal displacement
was plotted against shear stress for the 12 groups. The peak
and residual stresses where then used along with the
normally applied stresses to produce Figure 1 and 2. From
Figure 1 and 2, the cohesion for all soils was determined to
be zero as the y intercept was negative. This shows that
granular soils are cohesionless. The friction angle was
obtained by taking the gradient of the line of best fit where:
𝜑 = 𝑡𝑎𝑛−1(𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡). These values can be found in Table 1.
The chosen friction angle was 38.97° using the residual shear
stress for dense-saturated sample.
Analysis Method: Bishop’s Method was used in determining
the FOS as opposed to using infinite slope method. For
𝑐 𝑡𝑎𝑛𝖯
infinite slope method:𝐹𝑂𝑆 = + thus if the
𝛾𝐻𝑐𝑜𝑠2 𝛽𝑡𝑎𝑛𝛽 𝑡𝑎𝑛𝛽
cohesion is zero, the slope would be deemed stable as long as
Figure 5: Scenario 3. FOS=1.561
Figure 4: Scenario 2. FOS= 1.288
1.1775 to 1.561. The lower FOS of 1.1775 was chosen
because it was the closet to 1. Since the value is closest to 1,
scenario 1 slip surface is closet to failure compared to the
others.
Evaluation
The FOS value for Merriespruit Tailings Dam was found to be
1.1775 which indicates a stable slope by about 17.75%.
However the FOS value was not significantly higher than one,
which means that an increase in load could result in failure.
On the 22nd of February 1994, the dam failed after being
loaded extra by water due to a thunderstorm. This shows
that the dam was not designed accordingly since the FOS
value was too small.
References:
Das, B., M. and Sobhan, K. (2014), “Principles of
geotechnical Engineering” Eighth Edition, CENGAGE
Learning

Dzitse-Awuku,D (2020), CIVN4004 Slope Stability lecture

Notes, The University of Witwatersrand