TECHNICAL NOTES 97

AN AIR ACTIVATED SAND SPREADER FOR FORMING UNIFORM SAND BEDS

R. BUTTERFIELD* and K. 2. ANDRAWES*

INTRODUCTION
The formation of sand beds of uniform porosity is a fundamental problem associated with
all laboratory scale experiments involving granular materials. The usual methods used in
their preparation may be divided into two major groups according to the technique used for
controlling the overall porosity:
(a) methods where the porosity is adjusted after deposition, which are suitable for dense
beds only
(b) methods where the porosity is controlled during deposition, which aim at obtaining
any porosity within the maximum-minimum porosity limits of the material.
Shovelling, tamping or vibrating in layers falls into the first category and it is well known
(see e.g. Feda, 1961; Hansen, 1961) that beds formed by using these methods exhibit strongly
anisotropic properties and periodic porosity variations in the vertical direction. In the second
group control of the bed porosity is achieved by varying, independently, the height of fall of
the sand grains and the rate of deposition (Kolbuszewski, 1945). Two alternative deposition
techniques are commonly used:
(a) deposition using a controlled intensity rain of sand over the whole bed area (Kol-
buszewski and Jones, 1961)
(b) deposition using a controlled intensity sand curtain traversing the bed area (James,
1967; Walker and Whitaker, 1967).
The apparatus described uses the moving sand curtain technique. The discharge from a
slot in the travelling spreader being controlled by variation of the air flow through the slot.

AIR ACTIVATED SAND SPREADER

Sand spreader
The spreader is composed of a box divided into two compartments (Fig. 1 (a)). The upper
compartment is used for sand and its base slopes at 35” to the horizontal. The lower compart-
ment is airtight except for the discharge orifice and is used as a pressurized air reservoir.
The pressurized air discharges through a wire mesh screen across the full width of the
spreader, up through a shallow bed of sand and out into the atmosphere via an adjustable metal
orifice (Fig. l(a)). The orifice gap is adjusted to give no sand discharge without air flow.
Any air flow seepage forces then disturb the equilibrium of the sand mass and a uniform sand
curtain discharges from the horizontal slot at a rate which increases with increasing air flow.
Supplementary equipment is required to traverse the spreader across the sand bed at con-
stant velocity, reverse the direction of travel and refill the sand compartment. The rate of
discharge of the spreader does not vary with the amount of sand in the sand compartment
over the range of full to about one inch above the slot level.

Air controls
The air controls are shown diagrammatically in Fig. 1 (b) and comprise two on-off valves,
a pressure reducing valve from the main air line, a water trap, a mercury manometer measuring

* Department of Civil Engineering, University of Southampton.

4+

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 98 TECHNICAL NOTES

Air inlets

(a) Section of the spreader (cl Types of gap

Fig. 1

an arbitrary air line pressure and an inclined water manometer measuring the air reservoir
pressure.
Spreaders of two different sizes have been made and tested: a Perspex spreader 16 in.
long x 8.5 in. wide x 8.5 in. deep with a capacity of O-47 cu. ft (Butterfield and Andrawes, 1968),
and a wooden one 24 in. long x 1 l-5 in. wide x 13 in. deep with a capacity of 1.45 cu. ft. The
spreaders produce essentially similar performances.

CALIBRATION OF THE SPREADER

The sand used throughout these calibrations was a Leighton Buzzard sand of particle size
O-3 to O-85 mm, 50% passing 0.65 mm, uniformity coefficient 1.48, specific gravity 2.65, and
maximum and minimum porosities (Kolbuszewski, 1948) 44% and 33% respectively.
The spreader was calibrated by measuring the porosities at different parts of the deposited
bed for various values of air pressure and height of fall. The porosity of the deposited sand
was measured using cylindrical density pots 3.5 in. in diameter and 3.5 in. high with a knife
edge upper rim. The volume of the pots was measured by weighing them filled with water
and all weights of water or sand filled pots were measured to the nearest O-5 gm.
The mean of the porosities determined by the density pots for each test was considered to
represent the overall porosity of the whole bed, and the deviation of the porosities at different
parts of the bed from the overall porosity was used as a measure of the uniformity of the bed.
Each test was repeated several times and the deviation of the overall porosity of each test from
the mean overall porosity was considered to indicate the reproducibility of the results.

PERFORMANCE OF THE SPREADER

Figure 2 shows the effect of variations of the reservoir air pressure and the height of fall on
the overall porosity obtained. Any overall porosity required can therefore be obtained by
selecting the corresponding air pressure and height of fall for a particular size and shape
of outlet orifice.
The front metal section of the small spreader was ) in. thick and that of the larger spreader
3 in. Tests showed that, for the sand used, when there was no air flow the sand did not flow
from either of the spreaders when the gaps were equal to or slightly less than the thickness of

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 TECHNICAL NOTES 99

44 AIR PRESSURE : INCHES WATER

42

s 40
..
c
ix
E!
2 38

36

Fig. 2 (left). Calibration of the large

spreader
34 Fig. 3 (above). Pressure and height of
0 0.5 I’0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 fall relationships for a specific
AIR PRESSURE : INCHES WATER
porosity

the metal part forming the gap. Experiments with gaps of different cross sections, i.e.
straight, skew-upwards and skew-downwards (Fig. 1 (c)), showed that the straight gap gave the
most accurate control over the intensity of deposition. However, with a finer sand (751.50)
B.S. sieve preliminary tests have shown that the skew gap was most suitable.
For any particular air pressure it is necessary to keep the height of fall constant during
deposition to achieve a constant porosity bed. This requirement means that the vertical
distance between the spreader and the sand receiver has to be increased continuously during
filling. However, since the air pressure in the spreader can be accurately and simply con-
trolled a constant porosity bed can be obtained without maintaining a constant height of fall.
The increase in the porosity due to the decrease in the height of fall during deposition can be
corrected by continuously decreasing the air flow as the height decreases. Fig. 3 shows the
required relationships between air pressure and the height of fall to produce any particular
porosity. By using this technique the elaborate mechanical arrangements required to main-
tain a constant height of fall can be eliminated.
The uniformity and reproducibility were calculated for different values of air pressure and
height of fall. The results of some 200 calibration readings show that for the large spreader
the standard deviation of the uniformity is 0*23°h porosity, and that for the reproducibility is
0.13% porosity. For the small spreader the corresponding values are 0.1% porosity and
0.140/, porosity. A separate series of tests has shown that by interposing a diffuser mesh
in the sand curtain a minimum porosity of 34*2’/” can be obtained and, by using a conver-
gent guide chute, a maximum porosity of 45.0%.

CONCLUSIONS
The apparatus described provides an extremely simple, accurate and maintenance-free
method for depositing uniform porosity sand beds of any size. It also offers the advantage of
having a continuous accurate control over the rate of deposition of the sand, and hence
eliminates the need to maintain a constant height of fall during deposition. Essentially all
porosities within the accepted nmax-nm,,, range can be reproduced.
The inherent defect associated with a moving sand curtain spreader is present in this
apparatus, in that the sand is deposited in distinct layers which can be detected by X-ray

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 100 TECHNICAL NOTES

techniques and therefore some non-uniformity is unavoidably present in the bed. James
arently eliminated the layering in his tests by placing a diffuser mesh between the
!zit$zin and the bed.
The calibration figures given are peculiar to the particular sand, spreader geometries and
orifice dimensions used.

REFERENCES
BUTTERFIELD, R. & ANDRAWES, K. Z. (1968). Wedge penetration into soils. Report CE/23/68, Depart-
ment of Civil Engineering, University of Southampton.
FEDA. J. (1961). Research on the bearing capacity of loose soil. Proc. 5th Int. Conf. Soil Mech. 1, 635.
HANSEN, B. (1961). The bearing capacity of sand tested by loading circular plates. Proc. 5th Int. Conf.
Soil Mech. 1, 659.
JAMES, J. P. (1967). Stress-displacement relationship for sand subjected to passive pressure. Ph.D. thesis,
University of Manchester.
KOLBUSZEWSKI, J. (1948). An experimental study of the maximum and minimum porosities of sands.
Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. Soil Mech. 1, 158.
KOLBUSZEWSKI,J. & JONES, R. H. (1961). The preparation of sand samples for laboratory testing. PYOC.
Midland Soil Mech. Found. Engng Sot. 4. 107.
WALKER, B. P. & WNITAKER, T. (1967). An apparatus for forming uniform beds of sand for model founda-
tion tests. Gdotechnique 17, No. 2, 161.

A NOTE ON THE PROBLEM OF A PILE REINFORCED HALF SPACE

R. BUTTERFIELD* and P. K. BANNERJEE*

There are numerous published analyses of the load displacement behaviour of a single
axially loaded floating pile embedded in an elastic half space (Thurman and D’Appolonia,
1965; Salas and Belzunce, 1965; Poulos and Davis, 1968; Mattes and Poulos, 1969). All of
these, with the exception of Mattes (1969), have ignored the effect of the presence of the pile
as an inclusion interrupting the homogeneity of the half space. Mattes attempted to cal-
culate the pile-medium interface stresses for a rigid pile by introducing a radial stress Or,
which he found to be typically not greater than one per cent of the interface shear stresses.
However, Gpis a fictitious stress in the sense of Massonnet (1965) and will not be the true inter-
face radial stress.
The results of a more rigorous analysis are presented which indicate that the radial stresses
can be as much as 50% of the shear stresses. Full details of the analysis used have been given
elsewhere (Butterfield and Bannerjee, 1969a). The following is a summary of the essential
steps.
A suitable singular elastic solution which satisfies the equations of equilibrium and com-
patibility everywhere within the domain of interest is chosen. In this case Mindlin’s solution
(Mindlin, 1936) for a point load in the interior of a semi-infinite solid is used since it con-
veniently satisfies the boundary condition for the stress resultants on the surface of the half
space. This solution is a function of two points (A and B, say) which allows the stresses uik
and displacements Ui at point B due to concentrated forces F, at point A to be evaluated as
a,, = F,T,,,(A, B) ........ (1)
Ui = FjKij(A, B) ........ (2)

* Department of Civil Engineering, University of Southampton.

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