ABSTRACT
During an EPB drive it is essential to understand the behaviour of the material being excavated. There are numerous bodies of research concerning EPB conditioning that mostly focus on sandy or clayey soils, with relatively little published information regarding cohesive mixed soils. Terrains originating from the tropical weathering of rocks present these cohesive mixed soil characteristics. A laboratory routine was defined for investigating and characterising these cohesive mixed soils, their flow and clogging tendencies. This combined laboratory routine can be also applied to pure clayey soils. The laboratory routine is described here in detail, so it can be reproduced in any other facility, including tunnel project sites, or even using material from a borehole investigation, due to the low required amount of testing material. It is expected that this laboratory routine would make it feasible to more reliably assess the flow and the potential for clogging of cohesive soils.
