A NUMERICAL STUDY ON THE CONSOLIDATION EFFECTS ASSOCIATED WITH THE CONE PENETROMETER TEST

Abstract

In this study, the continuous penetration of a cone penetrometer is simulated using a simplified numerical technique, Press-Replace Method (PRM). Coupled-consolidation analyses were carried out to examine the cone’s response for a range of drainage conditions. The initial section of this study will attempt to validate the performance of PRM. Calibrated soil parameters representing 6 different on-site realistic soils (from published literatures) were used in the simulation of a cone penetration process. An existing procedure and its solution to address the error in the interpretation of soil coefficient of consolidation (ch) by DeJong & Randolph (2012) was examined. A new calibration approach and generalised solution was proposed in this research study. The influence of overconsolidation ratio (OCR) and soil cone roughness on the calibrated graphical solutions are presented. Finally, implementation of this procedure is demonstrated on a pseudo soil material representing silty soils.