Evaluation of an Automatic Drilling Soil Sampler Machine for Soil Compaction Studies.

Soil compaction has been commonly evaluated by soil penetrometer, which assess soil strength, but the strong dependence of soil penetration resistance with very dynamic soil parameters as soil water content limits its practical application. This work presents a new approach to assess soil compaction by using an automatic drilling soil auger, applied primarily for soil sampling. The innovation is the use of a pressure sensor that measures the pressure increase when sampling in more compacted soils. Results showed that the measured pressure was linearly correlated with the soil bulk density and the response was practically not influenced by soil water content degree. The observed behavior is very convenient and avoids the main problem of penetrometer for practical applications.