Assessment of Soil Strength Using Cone Penetrometer.

Dynamic cone penetrometer (DCP) testing, a popular method for determining soil strength in the geotechnical engineering field, is physically taxing, requires an additional operator to determine and record penetration depth, and is noisy.  A newly developed push-type static cone penetrometer (SCP), on the other hand, requires one person to operate, is quiet, continuously measures soil strength and penetration depth simultaneously, and records the data electronically in real time.  The main objective of this study was to develop a direct relationship between the applied force and the strength of the tested soil using a DCP and SCP.  Side-by-side measurements of soil strength with depth were made at three sites with two different soils.  A theoretical model was used to convert penetration depth per hammer drop for DCP to applied force vs. depth for comparison with SCP data.  The push-type SCP and DCP showed similar trends in assessing the soil strength over the same depth at all three sites.