Download: Load frame triaxial systems features.pdf
Five systems are available in this range: GEOLAB, ROCKTEST, MECATEST, GEOTEST, and GEOTEST EXPRESS. Floxlab’s load-frame triaxial compression systems are engineered to deliver precise and stable axial loading for an extensive range of geomechanical tests, from standard triaxial compression to more advanced research-oriented protocols. Each system is built around a rigid, high-capacity load frame designed to minimize machine deformation, ensuring that measured displacements reflect true specimen behavior rather than the frame’s deformation. This high stiffness is critical when testing soft and hard rocks alike, as it preserves the accuracy of stress–strain curves, elastic moduli, yield points, peak strength values, and post-peak responses.
The load frames use servo-controlled actuators operating in displacement, load, or strain-rate modes, allowing monotonic, cyclic, creep, and relaxation loading paths. With high-precision load cells and displacement transducers, the systems provide the resolution needed to capture pre-peak behavior, brittle failure, and post-peak deformation. Load-frame capacities vary across models to suit different materials, from low-force testing of small or soft specimens to high-capacity loading of full-size rock cores under elevated confining pressure.
Both GEOTEST and GEOTEST EXPRESS can operate in static loading regimes—where stresses are applied slowly to capture quasi-static mechanical properties—and in dynamic regimes, where rapid or cyclic loading is used to study rate effects, transient behavior, and dynamic failure phenomena.
The load frame, triaxial cell, and data acquisition system are fully integrated so that sensor feedback directly drives the control loops, ensuring smooth loading ramps, stable holds, and reliable long-duration operation for both routine tests and detailed research work. Interchangeable platens and cell components allow easy adaptation to different specimen sizes, increasing flexibility and extending the usefulness of a single load frame across multiple projects.
With suitable instrumentation, the load-frame systems can perform multiple tests, including stress–strain, ultrasonic velocity, AE monitoring, electrical resistivity, hydraulic fracturing, and permeability measurements.
Confining pressure is applied via a manual pump or servo-controlled intensifier that pressurizes the cell fluid to impose radial stress, operating in constant-pressure or constant-volume modes with feedback control to maintain stable confinement during loading and creep stages.
Pore pressure is regulated by an electro-mechanical pump or servo-controlled intensifier connected to the specimen’s drainage lines, operating in constant-pressure, constant-flow, or constant-volume-change modes to achieve drained, partially drained, or undrained conditions.
For high-temperature tests, the triaxial cell can be fitted with an external heating jacket that maintains uniform thermal conditions for thermo-hydro-mechanical studies representative of deep-reservoir environments.