Rigid Circular plate on sand. An experimental investigation

Problems as settlement, deformation and soil-structure interaction require to make assumptions on soil behaviour. Some of these assumptions are concerned with the current state of stress and the strain level to which the soil stiffness has to be referred to. The present Paper reports experimental results obtained in large scale physical model tests on a rigid circular plate. Soil model was obtained by pluviation method. The soil tested is an uniform silica sand of known characteristics. A method of measuring stress changes inside soil during the test has been suggested. The obtained distributions of stress incremental beneath the centre of the plate allow to make considerations on homogeneity and stiffness variations of the tested sand