ABSTRACT
The spatial distribution of soil influences the behavior of many geotechnical structures. The effect of spatial soil uncertainty has been modeled mainly by numerical approaches and some simplified experimental models. This article presents the development of a 3D clay printer that allows the construction of physical heterogeneous models. The 3D printer works with eight types of reconstituted clay soils, prepared with mixtures of kaolin and bentonite. To calibrate soils in terms of extrusion, indirect tests were carried out to determine the optimal water content at which soils have similar behavior. Although, the equipment can work with eight types of soil, the first prototype was made with four soils (from 0 to 33% of bentonite), due to the increase of viscosity of thixotropic clays. The heterogeneous layer shows that this new equipment can reproduce spatially random fields, and therefore it is a new tool that will allow the study of the effect of 3D variability in reduced scale models.
