ABSTRACT

So far, any particular soil has largely been assumed to be uniform and homogenous. This worked well until the discussion moved from calibration chambers to real soils and examined the effect of silt content. Implicit in the discussion was the fact that the CPT tip resistance, friction and pore pressure would vary as a function of soil type, as well as the in-situ state of the soil. Careful interpretation of the piezocone data will determine the state parameter, more or less continuously, throughout the soil at the sounding locations. But, experience shows that the soil state is rather variable laterally as well as vertically, even in a ‘uniform’ sand ‚ll, that is, one that has been constructed or deposited geologically in a similar way and from the same source material. The question that now needs to be asked is: What state best characterizes the overall response of the soil to loading that may lead to liquefaction? This question may be divided into two issues:

1. What is the real distribution of state in-situ? 2. What value of the given distribution characterizes behaviour of the soil mass?