Geotechnical Engineering Laboratory

Introduction

The PSU Geotechnical Engineering Laboratory ( has been established in 2013 This laboratory contributes mainly teaching and research activities in the Engineering Management Department It provides support in a wide range of specialized areas of soil and rock mechanics to the students and faculty members

Mechanics of soil affect many aspects in construction projects It is vitally important to know the characteristics of soils before starting a project Our comprehensive range of soil testing equipment are used to obtain the physical and engineering properties of soil in accordance with international standards

International safety and security standards are applied in the Geotechnical Engineering Laboratory to ensure the safety and security of our students For more information in this regard, please check our Safety Manual.

Facilities

Generally, the Geotechnical Engineering laboratories have standard soil and rock testing equipment including soil classification, compaction, consolidation, direct shear, permeability, unconfined compression and stress and strain controlled monotonic triaxial devices Almost all devices are equipped with computer data acquisition systems Soil Mechanics Laboratory also has various facilities Those can be classified into three main categories

Soil Testing

The Geotechnical Engineering laboratory have standard in situ and laboratory soil testing equipment and has the capabilities to carry out the following tests

Physical Properties of Soil :

  • Sieve Analysis Test
  • Hydrometer Test
  • Fall cone Penetration Test
  • Specific Gravity Test
  • Atterberg Limits Test
  • Water Content Test

Permeability of Soil :

  • Constant Head Test
  • Falling Head Test
  • Capillarity Permeability Tests

Soil Compaction :

  • Standard Proctor Compaction Tests
  • Modified Proctor Compaction Tests
  • California Bearing Ratio (CBR) Tests
  • Field Sand Cone Test

Soil Compressibility and Swelling :

  • Standard Consolidation Test
  • Uniaxial Swelling Test
  • Free Swelling Test

Shear Strength Of Soil :

  • Triaxial Tests
  • Laboratory Vane Test
  • Unconfined Compression Test
  • Direct Shear Test

Rock Testing

The Geotechnical Engineering laboratory have standard laboratory rock testing equipment and has the capabilities to carry out the following tests

  • Rock Permeability Test
  • Rock Compression Test
  • Rock Strength Test
  • Rock Sample Extruder

Numerical Analysis Software

Finite Element Software

The Laboratory is principally an educational facility that aims at qualifying civil engineers in the Soil Mechanics and Foundations Engineering field The Laboratory provides finite element software to students of Prince Sultan University and also give the opportunity to the external M sc and Ph D students to use these software in their researches

  • MIDAS GTS NX (2D, 3D Analysis)
  • PLAXIS (2D, 3D Analysis)

Supporting Facilities:

The Laboratory has its own supporting facilities comprising personal computers, and printers.

Educational and Research Activities

The college of engineering has well equipped the geotechnical engineering laboratory specialized in soil mechanics and foundation engineering areas with all modern equipment to cater the requirements of students and faculty members for both the teaching and research activities

Course supported includes

  • EM 306 Soil mechanics and Foundations

Research Activities

The overall rate of high quality research output at PSU has increased dramatically throughout the period with an over 200 increase in total Scopus publications between 2012 and 2016 To facilitate this ongoing surge, Geotechnical Engineering Lab has been developed and upgrades with new equipment in 2019 Also, numerous research projects were approved and received institutional support in 2019 These research projects will start through the geotechnical Eng Lab in 2020

Training and Workshops:

Geotechnical engineering lab has organized the 1 st online workshop for numerical and finite element analysis in geotechnical engineering This workshop is offered for Free to MSc and Ph D students across the globe The content of this workshop is accredited by Midas soft Co and by the end of these online sessions, attendees received a certified training certificate approved by MIDAS co and Prince sultan university Also, the workshop is presented by Dr Mohamed Ezzat The main purpose of this online session is to share knowledge and experiences, also to help young researchers to conduct qualified publications in the area of geotechnical engineering Ten MSc and PhD students from different countries Egypt, Oman, Germany, and China participated in this workshop.

Lab. Coordinator

Dr. Mohamed Ezzat | B.Sc. (Hons), M.Sc., Ph.D.

Assistant Professor in Geotechnical Engineering
Engineering Management Department
College of Engineering
Prince Sultan University
Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Phone: +966 11 494 8292| Mobile:+966 506362379
Email: mezzat@psu.edu.sa