Shear-plate transducers as a possible alternative to bender elements for measuring G_max

The bender element technique (Dyvik & Madshus, 1985) is routinely used to measure the small-strain shear modulus G_max of geomaterials. Although it has been successfully used with clays, sands, and stiff materials such as cemented soil (e.g. Jovicic et al., 1997; Ismail et al., 2004), it has the following physical disadvantages:

This note aims at reviving the shear plate as a viable alternative technique to overcome the limitations of the bender element. A detailed description is given for manufacturing normal incidence shear-plate transducers using piezoceramic crystals. Finally, testing results using both bender elements...