Engineering Specifications

Testing equipment, instrumentation and testing personnel was provided by the Structures and Geometrics Testing Laboratory of The Department of Civil Engineering at The University of Queensland, a NATA accredited testing facility.Primary intention of the testing was to establish the lateral bending strength of a variety of OZPOSTS in light to medium sandy and silty clay soil conditions.This would provide test data at the bottom end of the range of expected bending strength, thus providing a lower bound expectation and replicate the behaviour of the OZPOST under the effect of wind loading or other horizontal loading.Dynamic Cone Penetrometer testing was undertaken at a representative number of points at each test site to provide for correlation between soil strength parameters and OZPOST bending strength test results. Data specific to these tests is available on request.

A 5kN calibrated load cell was used to apply a horizontal load against a reaction frame.Loading was applied at approximately 1kN/minute to failure.

From the test data obtained, suitable posts for particular applications could be established by calculation to suit particular OZPOST supports in these soil strength conditions.

1. For the Oz-posts tested in sand, failure was by overturning due to soil failure. Thus in better soil, the Oz-post strength would be expected to increase.
2. For the S600 and SW600 Oz-posts tested in silty clay, failure was by compression blade buckling. In better soils the Oz-post strength would not be expected to increase significantly.
3. Similar products were tested under the same conditions and failed to meet Oz-Post standards.