Evaluation of probes and techniques for water content monitoring in geotechnical centrifuge models

Abstract

Presented in this paper are measurements from five different laboratories with four different probes to determine the moisture content of sand samples in flight on a geotechnical centrifuge. The sensors are resistivity probes, capacitance probes, TDR sensors and Geiger Müller tubes. Experiments were carried out with a sand-water-air system, resistivity probes and TDR sensors were additionally tested in the sand-water-NAPL system. All probes were fast responding and gave reliable and reproducible results during centrifuge tests at up to 40 g. The work presented in this paper was carried out as part of the NECER programme funded by the European Commission.