The 15th European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Athens

GDS has recently returned from Athens where they exhibited at the 15th European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering. GDS had a fully functional dynamic triaxial testing system (ELDYN) on show along with a Pressure / Volume Controller and a set of Bender Elements. All of the equipment was working on the stand and attracted significant interest. ‘Fantastic to see a triaxial system that moves fast enough for it to look interesting!’ was one comment, based on the fact that GDS had the ELDYN running tests between 1Hz and 5Hz with amplitudes between 10mm and 2mm.

GDS exhibited alongside Neotek, their Greek agents of more than 20 years. Neotek specialise in the fields of scientific and industrial instrumentation covering materials testing, mechanical, civil, geo-mechanical, geotechnical, seismological, geological, earthquake engineering, data acquisition and processing systems.  The conference provided an ideal  opportunity to meet up with many Greek customers, plus other customers from around Europe. Amongst the papers presented at the conference on laboratory techniques, a high percentage were published on bender element techniques.  The discussion session on the first day provided some great discussion over bender element interpretation as to whether the frequency dependency of bender element testing is being appreciated well enough in their use. Expect to see some standards being produced in the coming years.

Although not as many people attended as the organisers had hoped for, the exhibition was a great success and GDS would like to thank everybody involved in the organisation of the event and those delegates who visited the stand. We appreciate it was busy at times, so if you didn’t get a chance to speak with any members of our team and would like some additional information, you can contact us via email or call us on +44 (0)1256 382450.