Sand Sampling for Testing

Abstract

Fine aggregate (Sand) is a necessary material used in concrete construction purposes, it’s naturally available and it’s widely used around the world for different parts of construction in any building mainly for filling the voids between gravel. Sand gradation is important for different composite materials, and it gives good cohesion when compared with coarse sand that provides strength for the building. Therefore, sand is necessary to be tested before it is used and mixed with other building materials in construction and the specimen must be selected carefully to represent the real material in the field. The specimen weight must be larger than the required weight for test. When the weight of the sand sample increases the approximate precision desired increases. In this study, an approximated multilinear function for Fuller’s curve on the logarithmic scale was used to simulate the fine aggregate (sand) numerically. In order to get the effect of different samples, a stochastic analysis was done by employing 100 realizations of specimens, has been conducted to study the effect of sampling on sieve analysis and the root mean square error (RMSE) for the variation between desired and sampled curves. Then the results were compared with available specifications recommendations.