Casagrande Device

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The Casagrande Device is a simple piece of apparatus used to find the liquid limit of a soil, clay or clay body in relation to the Atterberg Limits and is somewhat empirical. It was developed by Arthur Casagrande, an American civil engineer in the 1930's.

The apparatus consists of a standard dish, which is filled with a soil sample of known water content. A standard-size groove is made in the sample. The device is agitated by turning a handle connected to a cam like system which lifts the dish a distance before dropping it onto a hard surface. The experiment is stopped when the sides of the groove fail. The boundary for defining the liquid limit is 25 rotations of the handle at 2 r/s.