Every building or structure imposes load on the soil supporting the foundation and this develops stress among the soil particles; failure of this stress leads to the sliding of one body of soil relative to the surrounding mass.
Tinius Olsen’s Direct Shear Test Apparatus is a motorized dead weight testing machine designed for direct and residual shear testing on undisturbed and remolded soil specimens. The machine uses a 10:1 beam loading device to control confining pressures, a load cell with readout to measure shear pressure and a displacement transducer to measure shear and vertical displacement.