Abstract:
The Borehole Shear Test(BST) was introduced as a new in-situ method for determining shear strength parameters of soils.The borehole shear tests are summarized,including the shearing mechanism,test equipment and test data processing method etc.To evaluate the engineering applicability of the test,the Iowa borehole shear tester are adopted to determine shear strength parameters of unsaturated loess and saturated loess in geotechnical investigation.The test results show that,the BST is a rapid and direct method of measuring the in,situ shear strength of loess,and gains a good linear relativity between normal stress and shear stress.Then in view of existence question in BST,the recommendations for future research are also proposed.