A Calibration Equation for Combining Dry-Sieving and Laser-Diffraction Techniques for Assessing Grain-Size Distributions of Beach Sands

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ramsdale, T.M. and Fairweather, P.G., 2016. A calibration equation for combining dry-sieving and laser-diffraction techniques for assessing grain-size distributions of beach sands. Using laser diffraction to determine sediment grain-size distributions is faster than sieving methods; however, the results of these analytical methods can often differ. Samples are generally only analysed using one method, so the need to convert results, such as for comparison with published values or earlier data collected using different analytical techniques, may arise. To determine a calibration equation for comparing results obtained by laser diffraction to those from test sieves, natural beach-sand samples were processed by both methods and results for mean grain size, sorting, skewness, and kurtosis were compared. There was a strong, linear relationship between methods for mean grain-size values, and calibration between the two methods thus was found to be possible by using the equation: mean grain size (laser ...