Development of laminar shear soil container for shaking table tests

Based on the investigation of the shaking table tests at home and abroad，a laminar shear container is designed. The developed laminar box is a large-size shear box consisting of fifteen horizontal layers made of steel tubes. Each layer has an external dimension of 3.7 m by 2.2 m in size and 0.1 m in thickness. The layers can move relatively to one another in accordance with the deformation of the soils inside. The boundary effects will also be weakened considerably because of the free movement of two boundaries. On the two side faces parallel to the vibration direction, the four upright columns are installed. Several shafting bearings on each column are all contacted with the side face of the box. The rotation of the soils will be limited. And then, the container is evaluated by comparing the measured acceleration records in free field under simple harmonic waves and seismic excitations. A statistical index is presented to evaluate and compare the boundary effects of several kinds of soil containers. The results show that the developed laminar shear soil container is successful in simulating the soil boundary condition. It is an ideal container to weaken the reflection and scattering effect of waves on the boundaries.