Soil Sampling

• To obtain information on subsurface conditions soil samples

are recovered from their natural location in the ground by the
utilization of special techniques and sampling equipment.
• Typically, the boring and sampling procedure involves drilling
a hole to a desired sampling depth by using wash boring or
auger methods and then inserting a soil sampler into
undisturbed earth to obtain a soil specimen.
• The soil sampler is a section of metal pipe or tube with a
cutting edge at one end and attachments to hold the soil in
the sampler as it is brought to the surface. Sampler lengths
typically range between 18 in. and 3 ft, or approximately 0.5
and 1 m. Samplers come in different diameters and with
different wall thicknesses.
Three types of soil samples can be obtained during subsurface
exploration:

1. Altered soil (Non representative Samples)

2. disturbed samples, and
3. undisturbed samples

1. Altered Soil (also known as Non-representative Samples).

During the boring operations, soil can be altered due to mixing
or contamination. Such materials do not represent the soil
found at the bottom of the borehole and hence should not be
used for visual classification or laboratory tests.
Causes are as follows:
• Failure to clean the bottom of the boring,
• Soil contamination (the soil sample may become
contaminated with drilling fluid),
• Soil mixing (suppose varved clay, which consists of thin
alternating layers of sand and clay, becomes mixed
during the drilling and sampling process).
• Change in moisture content (due to the drilling fluid or
from heat generated during the drilling operations),
• Densification of soil (the process of over-pushing or
over-driving could squeeze water from the soil)
2. Disturbed samples: In general, disturbed soil is defined
as soil that has not been contaminated by material
from other strata or by chemical changes, but the soil
structure is disturbed and the void ratio may be altered.
In essence, the soil has only been remolded during the
sampling process. However, these samples represent the
composition and the mineral content of the soil.
These samples can generally be used for the following types of
laboratory test:
i). Grain-size analysis, ii). Determination of Atterberg Limits, iii).
Specific gravity of soil solids, iv). Determination of organic
content, v). Classification of soil, vi) Expansion index test, vii)
Chemical composition (such as soluble sulfate), and viii)
Laboratory compaction tests.
3. Undisturbed samples: These are the samples in which the
natural structure of the soil and the water content are
retained.
It is nearly impossible to obtain a truly undisturbed sample
of soil, so in general usage the term undisturbed means a
sample where some precautions have been taken to
minimize disturbance of the existing soil skeleton.
Undisturbed samples are used for i). consolidation, ii).
hydraulic conductivity, iii). shear strength, and iv) density
tests.
The most important engineering properties for foundation
design are strength, compressibility, and permeability.
 Some of the factors that make an undisturbed sample
hard to obtain: (OR factors causes soil disturbance)

1) The sample is always unloaded from the in situ confining

pressures, with some unknown resulting expansion.
2) Samples collected from other than test pits are disturbed by
volume displacement of the tube or other collection device. The
presence of gravel greatly aggravates sample disturbance.
3) Sample friction on the sides of the collection device tends to
compress the sample during recovery. Most sample tubes are (or
should be) swaged so that the cutting edge is slightly smaller than
the inside tube diameter to reduce the side friction.
4) Pieces of hard gravel or shell fragments in the soil, which can
cause voids to develop along the sides of the sampling tube
during the sampling process.
5) There are unknown changes in water content depending on
recovery method and the presence or absence of water in
the ground or borehole.
6) Loss of hydrostatic pressure may cause gas bubble voids to
form in the sample.
7) Handling and transporting a sample from the site to the
laboratory and transferring the sample from sampler to
testing machine disturb the sample more or less by
definition.
8) The quality or attitude of drilling crew, laboratory
technicians, and the supervising engineer may be poor.
9) On very hot or cold days, samples may dehydrate or freeze
if not protected on-site. Furthermore, worker attitudes may
deteriorate in temperature extremes.
Soil Sampler
• One of the most widely known and used soil samplers is the
standard split spoon sampler.
• This sampler consists of a longitudinally split tube, or barrel, 2
in. (51 mm) in outside diameter and having a (35 mm) inside
diameter.
• The splitting aspect of the sampler permits it to be opened so
that the soil specimen can easily be examined and then placed
in a container for shipping.
• The standard split spoon sampler provides samples rated as
“disturbed.”
• When the material encountered in the field is sand
(particularly fine sand below the water table), recovery of the
sample by a split-spoon sampler may be difficult. In that case,
a device such as a spring core catcher may have to be placed
inside the split spoon
Evaluation of Sample Disturbance:
Although sample disturbance depends on factors such as rate of
penetration, whether the cutting force is obtained by pushing or
driving, and presence of gravel, it also depends on the dimensions
of the sampler (wall thickness).
For soil samplers, the two most important parameters to evaluate
disturbance potential are the inside clearance ratio and area ratio
(which is the ratio of the volume of soil displaced to the volume of
collected sample), defined as follows:

Area ratio OR, Area ratio Inside clearance ratio

 D  D
2 2

Ar (%)  100 4
o 4i Do2  Di2 Di  Di
 Di2 Ar (%)  100 Cr (%)  100
4 Di2 Di
• In general, a sampling tube for undisturbed soil specimens
should have an inside clearance ratio of about 1 percent and
an area ratio of about 10 percent or less.
• If the area ratio is not greater than about 10 percent, the
distortion of the sample is small in almost any type of soil.
• The friction between the soil and inside of the sampling tube
during the sampling process is kept minimum by crimping the
cutting edge so that its inside diameter Di is slightly smaller
than the inside diameter of the tube Di. Cr should be higher
than 0.5% to reduce friction.
• If Cr becomes too large, the sample may expand excessively as
it passes into the sampling tube and its strength may be
considerably decreased. Cr should be lower than 1.5% to
avoid excessive lateral expansion of the sample.
 Three of the more widely used “undisturbed”
category of samplers are the
• Shelby Tube,
• Piston Sampler, and
• Denison Sampler
Fig.(a)Thin-wall “Shelby Tube” sampler, (b)Stationary piston sampler,(c)Denison sampler.
 Shelby Tube sampler
• The thin-wall Shelby Tube sampler is a seamless metal tube
having a limited wall thickness.
• To obtain the sample, the Shelby Tube is “pushed”
(hydraulically pressed) into the earth to obtain the soil
specimen.
• Once the sample has been recovered, the ends of the tube are
sealed in order to avoid moisture changes.
• Limitations of the open-ended samplers arise from the fact
that remolded material cannot be prevented from entering the
tube from the sides and from the bottom of the bore hole.
 Piston Sampler

• The Piston Sampler is an modification of the Shelby Tube

sampling method.
• This sampler includes a piston device, which serves to push
the thin-wall tube into undisturbed soil from the bottom of
the boring.
• The quality of the samples can be increased by using the
stationary piston sampler; a thin-walled tube is fitted, in
this case, with a piston which closes the end of the tube
until the bottom of the borehole is reached.
• In such a way, the remolded soil is prevented from entering
the tube; the tube is then pushed past the piston to sample
the soil.
 Denison Sampler

• Thin-wall tubes cannot be used to obtain undisturbed

samples in stiff clays and hard or cemented soils, where
double-core barrels are generally employed.
• The Denison Sampler, or Denison Core Barrel, is a double-
walled sampler that rotates or cores its way into
undisturbed soil.
• The outer barrel rotates to cut into the soil. The sample is
obtained with the inner barrel.
Method of obtaining undisturbed samples in coarse-grained soils:

• There is no possibility of obtaining undisturbed samples in

coarse-grained soils by using the above described techniques, as
the soil structure is completely destroyed when driving or
pushing the sampler.
• At present, the only possibility of obtaining high-quality
undisturbed samples of saturated loose and dense sands is
offered by an in situ freezing method.
• This is a very sophisticated and costly technique, which uses
liquid nitrogen to freeze the soil; then, a core barrel with
hardened metal teeth is advanced into the frozen soil.
• The recovered frozen sample is cut into blocks and transported
in a refrigerated truck to the laboratory, where the frozen
specimens are allowed to thaw after being assembled into the
testing apparatus.