Abstract
An extensive soil testing program was conducted on clay and sand materials using three different devices, namely the standard triaxial, the N.G.I. simple shear device and the thin long hollow cylinder. Both monotonic and cycling loadings were used and led to results that dramatize the influence of the boundary conditions present in each device. The use of the simple shear test to simulate the conditions that prevail during landslides or earthquakes is found to lead to erroneous results when compared to the thin hollow cylinder. For both static and dynamic tests the triaxial tests is definitely an improvement over the simple shear one. The thin hollow cylinder is shown to be the most desirable configuration to be used in the soils laboratory for studies related to strength and stability under both static and earthquake situations.
