Journal/Progress Report

July 1, 2016
We arrived at Thammasat University by 2 pm and we were welcomed by Ms. Pim
Cha Cha, one of the administrators here in Faculty of Engineering. She accompanied
us to the VKP Mansion where we would stay for the whole month. After settling
down our things, we came back to the university and Dr. Montalee gave us a tour of
the Faculty of Engineering and Thammasat University. We met our professor, Mr.
Kasemchart Srivalai and he accompanied us to the laboratories that he handles. He
showed us the Laboratory for Bitumenous Materials, Soil Laboratory and Research
Facility for Soil. After the tour she treated us to a dinner in Simply Delicious together
with our professors/advisers and other students of Thammasat.
July 3, 2016
Sir Ryan decided to go to Chatujak Market to buy souvenirs so we accompanied him
to the market.
July 4, 2016
Our professor introduced us to Modified Cam Clay and gave us references to
explore. He told us that knowledge about Modified Cam Clay would help us predict
parameters of soil without conducting a laboratory test that would take time and
capital to conduct.
July 5, 2016
We went to Ayutthaya which is the former capital of Thailand. Tungkla, a chemical
engineer taking up masteral courses at the university accompanied us to Ayutthaya
Temples. After the trip, we went to floating market to eat lunch.
July 7, 2016
Synyster Karn and Aor, students of professor Kasemchart, demonstrated to us how
to setup the specimen in the triaxial test. They prepared the specimen with
standard proctor compaction hammer. Then they setup the specimen in the triaxial
test and de-aired the tubes and valves before putting in the chamber. They
administered water inside until water flows out through the bleed valve. Professor
Kasemchart taught us how to run the triaxial apparatus with CLISP software studio.
After setting up the software, the specimen was saturated and a B-Check was used
to determine its saturation level.
July 8, 2016
The porewater pressure transducer did not give any value but since the first test
was only for demonstration purposes we proceeded to the consolidation stage. The
stopping conditions set cannot be met and there is no way to determine how much

the soil has consolidated since it there is something wrong with the sensors. We run
the shearing stage and connected the ram to be able to apply a specific load. The
speed of straining entered was small but the apparatus run the rammer at very high
speed. Professor decided to call an engineer to fix everything in the equipment
since there is no proper communication between software and machine.
July 11, 2016
Mr. Teng, engineer of VJ Tech, fixed the apparatus and explained that setting in the
software might have been changed thats why there was no proper communication
between the software and the apparatus. He has fixed the problem but the
submersible load cell needs to be calibrated since there was a restart of the
program.
July 13, 2016
We helped our professor calibrate the load cell by applying some loads with a steel
block and measuring the error from the difference of the weight of block and the
value registered from the load cell. The measured error was roughly around 10%.
Then the submersible load cell was connected to the ram while an external load cell
was also inside the chamber. After calibration, the error recorded was only around
1% which is already acceptable. We have also drafted our experimentation program
since the equipment is already fixed. The program would be constituted by 5
samples tested under different conditions of confining pressure and saturation.
July 14, 2016
We dried the soil in the oven so that we could determine its compaction curve. The
compaction curve would be useful to determine the optimum moisture content
which would be the basis of the moisture content for the specimen.
July 15, 2016
The materials that were prepared for the determining the compaction curve are the
mould, standard proctor hammer, pan and five moisture cans. Since a standard
proctor test would be conducted, we made 3 layers and compact every layer with
25 blows. We started at 3% moisture content and additional 3% every trial. We
made five trials at the span of the test.
July 16, 2016
We only weighed the moisture cans to determine the moisture content of every trial.
The optimum moisture content showed in the graph was only about 5%. This is near
the optimum moisture content determined by a group here in Thammasat
University that used the same soil for their thesis.
July 17, 2016

For this day, we went to The Church of our Lady Mother of God to celebrate the
Sunday mass. We met a community of Filipinos who were members of Christian Life
Program as well. They invited us to lunch and we happily joined them. After lunch,
we went to Siam Paragon which is a popular mall in Thailand.

July 18 July 20, 2016

It was a long holiday in Thailand because they were celebrating the Buddhist Lent.
We spent these three days trying to make the specimen for the Tri-axial Apparatus
and we failed several trials since the optimum moisture content is still not enough
to create a sample that is coherent. We kept on adding moisture content until there
are no crumbles the fall out on the specimen.
July 21, 2016
The moisture content that was used for the specimen is about 20% to be able to
create a good specimen. We mounted the specimen in the Tri-axial Apparatus and
wrapped it with a membrane to protect it from infiltration of water when confining
pressure is applied. Tri-axial chamber was locked and water was administered
inside. We soaked the specimen by applying a 5 kPa pressure at the pore water
pressure valve with a confining pressure of 10kPa.
July 22, 2016
The specimen was saturated at different stages of confining pressure while
maintaining an effective cell pressure of 10 kPa. At the end of the saturation stage,
the specimen has tilted and it looked like it expanded a little. Professor Kasemchart
checked the Automatic Pressure Controllers using an external pressure gauge. There
was a huge error in the pressure exerted by the Cell Pressure which could cause the
tilting of the specimen. This signifies that the effective cell pressure was not
maintained properly inside the specimen which could cause the tilting. We made a
new specimen and repeated the experiment up to the saturation stage.
July 23, 2016
Dr. Montalee gave us a tour of the Grand Palace located in Bangkok. Nut
accompanied us inside the Palace while giving us a history of place. It is the home
of the royal family for several decades.
July 24, 2016
Karn who is a student of our professor that helps us in the lab owns a company that
deals with bored piling in the East of Thailand. He drove us to one of their sites near
Pattaya Beach. He explained to us how they conduct their operations on creating
pile foundations for bridge construction. Using a piling rig with an auger at the end,

they bore a hole at a depth of 4 meters then protect it from soil collapse by putting
a soil casing. When they reach a depth where the groundwater is located they put
bentonite slurry in the hole to protect the soil from water pressure because casing
would be hard to drive down the hole because of friction. If the bored hole is 2
meters from the depth requirement, bucket is used instead of auger because it
would be hard to bore the soil with an auger. After boring, they put the
reinforcement and administer concrete inside the soil. This process would push back
the slurry on to the tank and it would be desand to be used again on other holes.

July 26, 2016

After the saturation stage, we performed the consolidation of soil under a confining
pressure of 50 kPa. This process would take a long time but since the specimen was
not fully saturated, the apparatus continued saturating the specimen for a couple of
hours.
July 27, 2016
Consolidation stage was finished and we prepared for shearing stage by setting up
the submersible load cell. The speed of straining was 1 mm/min. After shearing, the
data was exported so that we could plot the graph of deviator stress - axial strain in
excel.
July 28, 2016
We made a new specimen to determine two set of parameters in isotropic
consolidation test. These two parameters are the compression index and swelling
index. The parameters would be used in modified cam clay model. We mounted the
specimen in the Tri-axial chamber and modified the setting in the Clisp studio
software. We soaked the specimen and set the saturation stage to be automated
since it would take a long time before the specimen is saturated.
July 29, 2016
After the saturation stage, the software showed a B-Check value of 0.8 and our
professor decided to continue to consolidation stage since there is only one day left
for our internship. The isotropic consolidation would be start with 25 kPa, followed
by 50 kPa, 100kpa, 200kpa, and back to 100kpa. In each step, we need to record
the change in volume showed in the software to be able plot the points in specific
volume log of the pressure graph. We were only able to reach 200 kpa since it
takes a long time to consolidate the specimen.
July 30, 2016

We packed our things up since it was our last day in Thailand. We bid farewell to our
professors and friends in Thammasat University.