Development and performance verification of miniature pore water pressure transducer for dynamic centrifuge modeling

The miniature pore water pressure transducer is one of the key measurement tools in the geotechnical centrifuge model tests. Compared with the imported transducers, the domestic transducers still have a great distance in response accuracy, frequency response range, service life, etc. The DSP-I miniature transducer for pore water pressure is proposed. Moreover, the PDCR-81 of internationally widespread transducers and the DSP-I transducers are selected to perform a series of comparative tests in static and dynamic centrifuge models, and the response accuracy and stability performance of the novel DSP-I transducer are verified. The results show: (1) The measurement results of DSP-I and PDCR-81 transducers are highly consistent in the static centrifuge model tests with spin up 5g to 50g, and their error is less than or equal to 1%. (2) The test results of each pair of transducers are highly consistent under the continuous input of sine waves, seismic waves with different amplitudes and other dynamic loads, and their correlation coefficient is more than or equal to 0.9922. From these tests it is proved that the DSP-I of domestic miniature pore water pressure transducers have good response accuracy and stability performance and can replace internationally recognized standard miniature pore water pressure transducers and have significant cost advantage, which provides power support for the development level of dynamic centrifuge test technology in China.