Research and Development BranchIn an effort to establish a relationship between the length of time a garment will keep the wearer dry and laboratory tests of the fabric from which that garment was made, the study described in this report was undertataken. Since the rainroom has been recognized as a valid testing device, a correlation between rainroom results and data obtained by the much simpler and more economical laboratory tests should in most cases furnish an accurate method of predicting the performance of a garment under conditions of actual wear. This study shows that it is possible to estimate from the results of laboratory penetration tests the most probable rainroom protection time of a fabric treated with a durable water-repellent compound.

Abstract. Dry soil mix (DSM) columns are used to reduce the settlement and to improve the stability of embankments constructed on soft clays. During construction the shear strength of the columns needs to be confirmed for compliance with technical assumptions. A specialized blade shaped penetrometer known as the lime column probe, has been developed for testing DSM columns. This test can be carried out as a pull out resistance test (PORT) or a push in resistance test (PIRT). The test is considered to be more representative of average column shear strength than methods that test only a limited area of the column. Both PORT and PIRT tests require empirical correlations of measured resistance to an absolute measure of shear strength, in a similar manner to the cone penetration test. In this paper, finite element method is used to assess the probe factor, N, for the PORT test. Due to the large soil deformations around the probe, an Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) based finite element formulation has been used. Variation of N with rigidity index and the friction at the probe-soil interface are investigated to establish a range for the probe factor.

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