Study of a progressive failure in soil using BEDS

In Geotechnical Engineering, progressive failure in soil-structure interaction is one of the least understood problems. It is difficult to study this phenomenon at laboratory scale, because of the large amount of strain gages required per unit length/area of the structure, which would interfere with the mechanical properties of both the structure and the soil. The recently developed Brillouin Echo Distributed Sensor (BEDS) technology overcomes this dilemma by distributed readings and 5cm spatial resolution. A laboratory pullout testing program has been carried out to verify applicability of BEDS for the study of progressive failure in the soil-structure interaction.