SUBSURFACE EXPLORATION USING LOAD TESTS ON SHORT MODEL PILES AT VARIOUS DEPTHS OF A SOIL DEPOSIT FOR DETERMINING LOAD-SETTLEMENT RELATIONSHIPS AND ENGINEERING PROPERTIES OF SOILS AND INTERMEDIATE GEOMATERIALS

摘要

Subsurface exploration using In-Situ tests such as SPT, CRT, CPTu, DMT, and PMT predicts inaccurately engineering properties of soils and intermediate geomaterials and thereby predicts incorrect load-settlement relationship of piles; variations or errors in engineering properties predicted by one empirical correlation to another correlation could be up to 50% or greater. For soft to very soft soils, engineering properties cannot be predicted as the SPT only provides information such as WOR and WOH. To overcome this problem, the invention of this application consists of performing subsurface exploration using load tests on short model piles with or without instrumentation at various depths of a soil deposit for determining accurately the above-mentioned properties. For very soft soils, a hung balance is used to hang drill rods and short model pile from a drill rig boom or from a platform with soil anchors to prevent its overturning, and then perform the load test.