Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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0.0 INTRODUCTION
This is an attempt to familiarize young engineers with elements
of subsoil exploration so that they will not feel the site work
as of new kind of work or disappointed to correspond to the
contractor, client, and senior professional engineers. Each site
is different from others with topology, stratigraphy, cost, and
scope of work. So the investigation work may considerably vary
due to these factors. However, a reference is made to each topic
in the appended sheet. These references may work as guides for
fulfilment and widening of necessary skill required to work at
the site for beginners. It is believed that this small element
of presentation/“guide” when consulted with the references cited
in the front page of the text would be enough, if correctly
followed, to face challenges of detailed investigation works at
difficult site conditions with confidence.
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iii) Determine the location of bedrock. The quality of bedrock
may also be determined, but this is done only when
necessary due to the excessive cost of rock, compared
with soil, drilling.
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adequately designed for stability and settlement. Borings in
river channels for bridge piers should attempt to ascertain both
scour and competent soil depth.
The number of borings is highly project—and site—dependent as
well as on the professional judgement of the geotechnical
engineer. The number must be sufficient to give geotechnical
engineer reasonable confidence that the underground conditions
have been identified well enough to make recommendation at a
reasonable risk level. Since any recommendation carries some
risk, the lower the confidence level the more conservative will
be the recommendation. If these are overly conservative, the
owner client often incurs additional design costs which can
exceed the cost of making several additional borings.
The following are not very ethical practices:
i) Making large number of unnecessary borings to obtain a
good fee where the client has essentially said “do what
is necessary.” Also, making large numbers of borings to
delineate “poor” soils when the initial borings have
established that the entire site is underlain by erratic
soil deposits.
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A supervising engineer adheres to investigation work and works
out causes of any delay and reminds contractor for such delay.
The engineer checks shifting of soils to storage at the
laboratory and pursues the laboratory work and checks the boring
log submitted by the drilling company.
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A schematic diagram of a wash boring set-up is shown in the
diagram below. Sump may be a portable container (not often used)
or a pit dug on site.
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simultaneously with the circulation of bentonite mud and the
drilling work is in progress.
In rotary drilling, a twisting motion is applied at top of the
drill rod by the drilling machine through a rotating gear
arrangement. The twisting motion along with static vertical
pressure of the drill rods transmitted to the drill bit at the
bottom of the hole cuts the soil with a minimum disturbance
underneath as opposed to wash boring where the underneath soil
is disturbed by repeated drops of the drill rods(chopping). The
cuttings come out with the mud water at top due to circulation
of the mud. A reverse circulation of drill mud can also be
applied in which case the cuttings are flowing through the hole
of the drill rod.
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d) Provision of more field tests such as vane shear,
seismicity, electrical resistivity, pressuremeter tests,
etc.
e) Ground condition (strata)
f) Field condition, accessibility etc.
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to obtain corrected N values. Normalised N values are used for
correlation purpose by research workers and designers.
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B) Observe the structure of the soil; it can be mottled or
homogeneous.
C) Recognize the principal constituent. If it is sand, check
for grittiness and recognize the size of sand whether it is
fine, medium or coarse.
D) If the principal constituent is fines then proceed to
ascertain whether it is clay or silt. Clay is identified by
stickiness at palm of hand when it is wet. Silt is
characterized by non-stickiness at palm when wet and it
exudes between fingers when squeezed.
E) Secondary constituents should be identified and described
as a qualifying term for the main constituent. Care should
be taken to ascertain the secondary constituents.
F) Follow the project specification that specifies the method
for describing the soils e.g. USCS, BS, ISO, etc. If
nothing is specified then follow the suitable one preferred
by the geotechnical engineer.
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1.24 Some aspects of laboratory work
A laboratory should be clean and tidy. It should contain
sufficient storage for accommodating field samples. The storage
should not be hot and maintained proper ventilation.
Sufficient facilities for testing should be available. Working
desks should be available to accommodate testing instruments.
For chemical testing, a small room with extracting fan or fume
cupboard and adequate numbers of working desks and cupboard are
required for testing. Only trained workers should be allowed to
work.
All measuring devices should regularly checked for their
reliability.
A display board showing samples and testing be maintained at
correct location and should always be updated. No sample should
lie with unaccompanied Sample Card/Sub-sample No.
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With exception of organic soil and peat.
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Borderline cases should be classified on the basis of poorer
material.
SOLUTION
Since more than 12 percent passes the No.200 sieve, we can immediately
eliminate GW, GP, SW, and SP as possible classification for all three soils.
72 – 38 = 34 percent sand
100 – 72 = 28 percent gravel
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1.32 Correlations of SPT and CPT results
1. Correlation by Robertson and Campanela:
(Qc/Pa)/N60
The value is used for soil profiling.
2. Jefferies and Davies:
Ic = f(qc,fs)
Ic = f((Qc/Pa)/N60 )
This Ic is used for soil profiling
The cone does not seem to have been used to correlate with the
relative density so far.
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4) It allows a number of correlations between cone resistance
and the desired engineering property.
7) Engineers can gather data much faster and can take spot
decision for testing intermediate locations.
Disadvatages:
Some of the major disadvantages are that:
1) This method is applicable only in fine—grained deposits
(clay, silt, fine sands) where the material does not have
massive resistance to cone resistance. Pushing can be of
limited use in gravels and cemented soils.
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It can be performed both on partly disturbed soil and
undisturbed soil. Test result is more reliable when
performed on undisturbed soil.
3) Atterberg Limits
It is reliable irrespective of the sample disturbance. Its
value is slightly changed when tested on an air dried
sample.
4) Unconfined Compression
It is reliable when the sample is fine and saturated
undisturbed soil. Because of its simplicity, it is
preferred by many organisations.
5) Triaxial Compression
The test is performed on undisturbed fine soils and at
different loading and drainage conditions. It is costlier
than unconfined compression test. It is a preferred test by
geotechnical engineers.
7) Consolidation
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The test is performed on soft fine soil to determine
consolidation parameters. It is a lengthy test to perform
but valuable parameters are obtained. The test is time
consuming.
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A geotechnical engineer may find necessity of using void ratio
in compacted fill with cohesionless soil. This is because he has
to correlate these values with other geotechnical parameters
used to estimate the ground improvement to cope with potential
earthquake.
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