matériaux anguleux très charpentés

22:04 Dec 23, 2010
This question was closed without grading. Reason: Answer found elsewhere

French to English translations [PRO]
Tech/Engineering - Geology / Underground cable laying
French term or phrase: matériaux anguleux très charpentés
This is in a classification diagram of trench backfilling materials; two types are mentioned, the term asked here and this one:

matériaux roulés et matériaux peu charpentés

The term "angular materials" does exist. It's the très charpentés which is troubling me. The diagram is headed:

Sols Dmax > 50 mm

with Dmax: dimension du plus gros grain
claude-andrew
France
Local time: 11:59


Summary of answers provided
4 +1cuboid angular aggregate
Bourth (X)
2highly sharply angular materials
MatthewLaSon


Discussion entries: 4





  

Answers


6 hrs   confidence: Answerer confidence 2/5Answerer confidence 2/5
highly sharply angular materials


Explanation:
Hello,

That's how I read "très charpentés" (very sharply cut/defined)

Sharply angular materials (like manufactured sand or stone dust) are more prone ... Sharply angular materials can fit tightly together and have smaller void ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=TdTCPCce1msC&pg=PA269&lpg=P...

I hope this helps.

MatthewLaSon
Local time: 06:59
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish
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13 hrs   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +1
cuboid angular aggregate


Explanation:
I'll work on a better word than "cuboid" later. This is just to explain what I think they mean.

Aggregate can be given an "angularity number" (see Scott/Penguin Dict of Civ. Eng. for example). The lower the angularity number of an aggregate, the more workable (fluid) a concrete made with it will be. "Good concreting aggregates have a number less than 11". The angularity number of a perfect sphere is 0.

For backfill you want a high angularity number, an "angular aggregate", one that will lock together and resist compression. Running a truck over a metre-deep bed of ball bearings would be like driving over quicksand ...

However, you don't want your backfill aggregate to be too slender (elongation index) or it it is likely to snap under pressure and cause subsidence.

So ideally you want an aggregate that is basically cuboid but with plenty of angles, i.e. not simply six plane faces. Like brown sugar lumps. Ah, brown sugar ....

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Note added at 1 day18 mins (2010-12-24 22:23:12 GMT)
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Well-graded?
I had considered but discounted the possibility that charpenté referred to not a single or each individual grading of aggregate but to the mass of different aggregate grades, in which case "well-graded" would work. However since we have matériaux roulés it would seem we are talking about "individual" aggregate. Were we talking about the body of blended aggregate, would it not be matériau in the singular?


Bourth (X)
Local time: 11:59
Specializes in field
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish
PRO pts in category: 142

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  kashew: Seems all the ingredients! I'd forgotten most of it. Couldn't one add "well-graded"?
6 hrs
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