An Attempt to Automate Vane Shear Strength Measurement of Gravelly Sediment

Abstract

Vane shear strength has played an extremely important role as an indicator of the burrowing capabilities for diverse benthic organisms. For the purpose of simple measurement of the vane shear strength and elimination of error by the measurer, we attempted automatic measurement of vane shear strength by connecting a vane tester to a commercially available PET bottle opener. As a result of comparing the measured values of the vane shear strength with manual measurement with gradients in the particle size, density, and circularity of the substrate, the coefficient of determination in the regression line of manual measurement was high in all cases, but there was no statistically significant difference between them. The results of manual and automatic quantitative measurements also corresponded well to the increase in the friction coefficient tanΦcalculated from the angle of repose of the substrate. These results indicate the possibility of automating the measurement of vane shear strength by using a motor with an appropriate range of starting torque.