Application of static penetrometric tests in stratigraphic profile reconstruction
Diego Lo Presti,* Claudia Meisina,** Nunziante Squeglia*
Cone penetration tests are a well-established in situ test methods for site characterization. Their widespread use for subsurface explorations is due to their reliability, speed, economy and to the fact that they supply continuous records with depths of soil in situ engineering behaviour. One important use is the determination of the stratigraphic boundaries between soil layers and then the delineation of soil stratigraphy by comparing the sounding data with soil classification charts. The aim of the study is to verify the applicability of the most used empirical correlations for soil classification and soil stratigraphy description.
CPT, CPTu and boreholes data from some italian sites, belonging to different geological contexts, were collected. Laboratory investigation helped in the geotechnical characterisation of the soils. In some cases penetration tests were repeated in different periods of the year (dry and wet period) and with the use of different fluids for the filter saturation. Borehole logs were compared with soil profiles obtained with cone penetration test. A percentage of success for each method was calculated.
Stratigraphic interpretation of CPT and CPTu tests was done by using Static Probing software from GeoStru Software for CPT tests, CPeT-IT 1.5 (2008) (GeoLogismiki Sof- tware) for CPTu tests (methods of ROBERTSON et al.,1986; by ROBERTSON, 1990; and Opensounding ver. 2.01 (2006) for CPTu tests (method of ESLAMI and FELLENIUS,1997).
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