An experimental apparatus, designed to study flexural vibrations of a soil loaded plate, consists of a thin circular elastic plate clamped at the boundary between thick round flanges. The soil column is supported by the plate and upper cylindrical wall. A small magnet attached to the center of the plate is driven by a rigid ac coil (located coaxially below the plate) to complete the electrodynamic soil plate oscillator (SPO) design. Measurements of the electrical motional impedance Zmot of the SPO versus frequency are made using the complex output to input response of a Wheatstone bridge that has an identical coil element in one of its legs. The mechanical impedance Zmech (force/particle velocity, at the plate’s center) is inversely proportional to Zmot. Experiments, with and without mass loading at the plate’s center, verify Snowden’s theory for a clamped plate [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (1971)] and help establish mechanical parameters. Resonant oscillations (for various point mass loadings) provided effective mass, spring, damping and coupling constant parameters of the system. “Tuning curve” behaviors of real {Zmot} and imaginary {Zmot} at successive vibration amplitudes (for various soil column heights) are used to develop a general mesoscopic nonlinear elastic model for granular media.
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