WINE MODELLED IN GELATINE

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29748, 15 February 1962, Page 6

WINE MODELLED IN GELATINE

Engineer’s Plan To Test Stresses

Domestic gelatine, glycerine, castor oil and weedkiller made models of open-cast mine batters for Mr R. G Brickell, of Wellington, who had to determine their behaviour under load.

In presenting a paper on sheer stresses in batters to the New Zealand Institution of Engineers in Christchurch Mr Brickell said that he had been engaged to report on failures in the upper portions of batters in the Kimihia open-rast mine number "There are many problems in civil engineering which have not yet been and indeed may never be expressed and resolved in mathematical terms,” said Mr Brickell. “In such cases professional engineers are increasingly turning to the study of models of the prototype on which they are able to measure the variables.. and in this way produce a working approximation to a solution of the problem. “One such problem arose in determining the least material to be excavated from the bed of a lake to enable coal, lying over 100 ft beneath its surface to be safely and cheaply won by open-cast mining. Here the materials to be excavated were a rapidly-varying mixture of weak silts and clays. 1 “The quantities to be handled were enormous, and became uneconomically large when conventional means were applied to determine l at what slope the batter of the n ine would stand up safely Mr Brickell described examining the behaviour of the 1 model under test loads in a I polariscope. which gave a ■ graphic scale-model picture of the intensities of strain and stress within the batter itself, and enabled the most economical solution to the problem to be worked out.