Coefficient of Friction b/w Concrete and wood chips

[ranmoo]

I have an application of providing dead weight for a temporary hold down, such that the load on the concrete counterweights is to resist a horizontal load for a temporary situation (a week). I plan on being able to have a very conservative factor of safety, but does anyone have any thoughts on a coefficient of friction between a concrete counterweight sitting on a large pile of wood chips.

THANKS!!

 

[oldestguy]

Interesting. I happened to have a similar problem years ago. I did a field shear test. You need as large as shearing plane as possible, but I was limited to a one foot square corrugated block. Job was far from "home" so I used a 5 gallon bucket and a spring tension scale. Weighed the bucket load and used the spring scale to pull the corrugated sharing "sled". Run several runs with different loads and it was surprisingly effective way to measure the angle of friction.

This also was worked for other types of waste areas, such as fly ash..