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Soil mechanics

As a geotechnical or civil engineer, your work underpins critical infrastructure, from foundations and slopes to embankments and drainage systems. But soils don’t behave the same in the lab as they do in the field. And missing that nuance can mean overdesign, underperformance, or rework. What if both your lab and field measurements were as precise and dependable as the conclusions you need to draw from them? When the pressure’s on, you need tools that deliver accurate insight into what’s happening underground, as it happens.

Manual methods and inconsistent tools aren’t just slow, they’re risky

Traditional soil testing workflows introduce too many chances for error. When timing, team coordination, and liability are all on the line, outdated tools and methods put your project, and your reputation, at risk:

High variability between tests or users

Time lost troubleshooting or re-running incomplete tests

Conflicting results between lab and field teams

Delayed reporting that holds up project milestones

Soil mechanics is unforgiving. When you’re designing load-bearing foundations or validating stability models, there’s no room for delay or doubt.

METER’s lab and field systems are designed to streamline soil mechanics testing and deliver precise, repeatable data that meets the demands of high-stakes decision making:

HYPROP, WP4C, and KSAT deliver automated lab measurements of water retention, suction, and hydraulic conductivity, reducing manual error

TEROS sensors provide real-time field data on soil moisture, suction, and EC to support in situ modeling and design validation

ATMOS 41 weather station captures rainfall, solar radiation, wind, humidity, and barometric pressure: key drivers of soil hydraulic behavior that enhance modeling accuracy and help explain field variability

ZENTRA Cloud synchronizes field and lab data into a single, shareable dashboard so your entire team stays aligned and on time

From field to report—faster, cleaner, and more consistent

Geotechnical work is already complex. Getting good data shouldn’t be. METER gives your team the ability to move quickly from collection to confidence without second guessing or retracing steps:

Deploy METER instruments in the lab and at your field sites

Automate data collection and processing with cloud-connected tools

Deliver defensible results with less friction, less rework, and more confidence

More speed. More trust.

Less second-guessing.

When your data isn’t high quality, the entire project bears the consequences. Inaccurate inputs don’t just cost time, they impact safety, credibility, and cost overrun risks. If your soil data can’t be trusted, or worse, slows down your team, it’s a liability. Without integrated, accurate tools, you risk:

Delayed project schedules

Costly rework or design recalibration

Conflicting or rejected data by reviewers

Long-term consequences for safety and stability

When your workflow is smooth and your measurements are dependable, everything improves, from turnaround time to final results. With METER’s soil mechanics solutions in place:

Your team captures precise, consistent results the first time

Your data supports faster approvals and cleaner design validation

Your reputation is backed by accurate, dependable instrumentation

You free up time to focus on insights, not rework

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"What we’re doing with our METER monitoring stations is not super complicated. It involves a plan of what you want to get out of it. The same method could be applied anywhere, really."

Professor of Geology Stephen Hughes, PhD | University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez

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Soil mechanics solutions

Inconsistent data can compromise the very thing you're trying to protect. Get the precision, speed, and repeatability soil mechanics demands, without the workflow headaches. Explore METER soil mechanics solutions.

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Soil water retention curve (SWRC)
Soil hydraulic properties
Soil particle size analysis
Soil moisture

Soil water retention curve (SWRC)

When it comes to slope stability, seepage, and unsaturated flow, you can’t manage what you can’t measure accurately. A precise soil water retention curve (SWRC) reveals the critical relationship between soil moisture and suction—defining how water moves, drains, and holds within your profile. METER delivers the tools and expertise to generate high-resolution SWRCs, giving geotechnical engineers the insight to predict soil behavior, assess stability, and model water movement through the unsaturated zone—with confidence, not assumptions.

Soil water retention curve (SWRC)

Soil hydraulic properties

Better designs start with better data. Whether you're predicting water movement, assessing slope stability, or modeling environmental impact, everything depends on knowing how water behaves in the soils beneath your project. METER provides the tools and expertise to measure soil hydraulic properties with industry-leading accuracy—in the field or in the lab. So you can design, model, and make decisions with the confidence that your data is solid—and your structure is built on more than assumptions.

Saturated hydraulic conductivity

Unsaturated hydraulic conductivity

Get accurate, in situ hydraulic conductivity measurements with less water and simpler processes using SATURO and the Mini Disk Infiltrometer

Soil particle size analysis

You have to know your soil to predict its behavior. From slope design to drainage performance, the success of your project depends on how well you understand the material you’re building on. Particle size distribution shapes everything—strength, permeability, compaction, and water movement. METER’s soil particle size analysis solutions give you precise, repeatable insight into how your soil will behave under pressure, over time, and in changing conditions—so you can design smarter, mitigate risk, and move forward with confidence.

Automated soil particle size analysis

PARIO

Soil moisture

It’s not just how much water is there—it’s how it behaves. Understanding soil moisture means more than measuring volume. For geotechnical engineers, you need to know how tightly water is held in the soil—and how that affects strength, stability, and movement. METER offers a range of research-grade sensors that let you build a system tailored to your site—measuring both volumetric water content and soil suction to give you a complete picture of soil-water interactions, from saturation to slope failure risk.

Volumetric water content (VWC)

Soil suction/soil water potential

Z See how ZENTRA Cloud can simplify data management

ZL6 Data Logger next to a tablet and several screenshots. the tablet and screenshots show data visualizations from ZENTRA Cloud software

ZENTRA System

Customize your data collection and logging solution by combining multiple METER sensors with the ZL6 Data Logger and ZENTRA Cloud. ZENTRA stores your data in the cloud, allowing easy access to your data and near-real-time reports from all of your data loggers.

Avoid costly field visits by accessing your data from any web-connected device. Analyze it with ZENTRA Cloud’s built-in visualization tools, and easily share insights without tracking down log files on individual computers.

Learn more about ZENTRA

LABROS System

Streamline your laboratory analyses and reduce human error using the innovative LABROS soil science laboratory collection. Perform automated particle size analysis, generate soil moisture release curves, or measure thermal and hydraulic conductivity with METER laboratory instruments designed to produce accurate analyses in a fraction of the time of other methods.

Even better, LABROS instruments can be combined to perform all of these analyses from a single sample, saving time and reducing measurement errors due to variations in sample characteristics.

See LABROS products

LABROS-capable laboratory instruments from METER, including WP4C, KSAT, VARIOS, and PARIO