Reliability of the cone penetration test (CPT) for estimating shear strength of marine soils is investigated in this paper. For sands, the uncertainty about the angle of internal friction is analyzed. It includes the spatial variation of the soil and ...
Reliability of the cone penetration test (CPT) for estimating shear strength of marine soils is investigated in this paper. For sands, the uncertainty about the angle of internal friction is analyzed. It includes the spatial variation of the soil and the model error in the equation used for interpretation. The most serious uncertainty encountered was the error in the interpretative models. Different methods of interpretation gave quite different values. Subjective opinion was introduced to combine all the interpretative models in a systematic manner. For clays, the undrained Shear Strength from the CPT results is usually =derived by empirical correlations between cone resistance and untrained shear strength from laboratory tests or field vane tests, expressed in terms of cone factor and function of overburden pressure. The uncertainty of the undrained shear strength is caused by data scatter of the cone factor in the correlation, model error of the cone factor, effect of anisotropy, and spatial variability of cone resistance. Among these uncertainties, the most serious one was the data scatter of the cone factor in the .correlation. Between the laboratory test and the field vane test used for correlation, the field vane test was more reliable.