SAND SAMPLING BELOW THE WATER-TABLE USING THE 200 MM DIAMETER LAVAL SAMPLER

The large-diameter Laval sampler, originally developed for sampling so ft sensitive marine clays, was used to obtain samples from saturated c ohesionless soil deposits. This paper describes the different operatio ns for sampling sand deposits, which vary slightly from the convention al procedures used in clays. To preserve the fragile soil structure, t he samples are frozen unidirectionally ill open system conditions once at the ground surface. Field trial tests, conducted at two sites in t he province of Quebec, showed that the Laval sampler successfully obta ined 46 cm long samples from depths df about 6 m. Water content distri bution throughout the samples showed little variation, indicating that disturbance was minimal in these large-diameter samples.