LAUSR

Natural soils are often cemented, and there has been a need to better understand and properly model their behavior for the safe design and assessment of critical infrastructure. This necessitates the study of cemented soils at the scale of the grain. In this study, a new-generation apparatus is presented that is capable of conducting complex load path tests on two natural sand grains cemented with an artificial bonding component. Thus, the apparatus gives the opportunity to obtain insights into the micromechanics of cemented soils/weak rocks and contribute to the development of more accurate models to be utilized in the discrete element analysis of geomaterials. Apart from the presentation of the major technical features of the new apparatus, a description of the methods which were used for specimen preparation and mounting, as well as a preliminary set of experiments, are presented and discussed in this note.