Canterbury Geotest Services

CPT TESTING  and SCALA TESTING

1. CPT Testing

We operate a (mini) 25mm diameter CPT cone produced by A.P van den Berg  in the Netherlands. The 25mm cone has two advantages over a standard 37mm diameter cone.

1. It is more sensitive in softer soils picking up varaitions in soil strength that larger cones miss.

2. Less load is required to push the cone into the ground. This means we rely solely on the weight of the machine and do not require auger anchoring . This allows a quicker set up time and less damage to surrounding soil.

Canterbury Geotest uses custom built software developed in-house therefore we can present the data in any format the customer requires.

2. HYDRAULIC SCALA TESTING

Our machine can be set up to do Scala testing with standard Scala tip and rods. This is very suitable for subdivisions when many tests are required. The Scala probe is pushed into the ground by hydraulic rams under a constant force. This method is very fast and accurate. It removes operator variability and the results are recorded directly to a data file.

Most importantly it saves the operator from injury. Hand Scala tests are very laborious and can hurt your engineer's back permanently.

Numerous tests were carried out comparing the force measured by our machine and the number of blows recorded with a hand operated device. A scaling factor between the hand test and our machine readout has been established with a good correlation.

Please read an evaluation report(pdf) by Dr Kevin McManus on our Scala testing machine.