Practical experience of bender-extender elements

International audienceThis paper deals with a rather short practical experience of the use of bender elements (2000-2002) and since 2002, of bender-extender elements at the Research Institute in Civil and Mechanical Engineering (GéM). The bender-extender elements are piezo-ceramics transducers set up into a conventional triaxial cell. These new transducers allow one to transmit and receive both P-waves and S-waves with the same couple of elements. This new technique is applied to a dense dry Loire River sand along isotropic stress paths