ABSTRACT
For cohesionless soils, the dry unit weight, or more commonly, the relative density or density index, is often used as an intermediate soil parameter for assessment of engineering properties (Lunne et al. 1997). Normally, this property can be determined by performing laboratory tests on undisturbed soil samples. However, its determination is sensitive to inevitable sample disturbance. The traditional method will become very costly if high quality soil samples of a profile are required. As a result, it is often difficult to accurately define a complete profile for an entire soil deposit. In situ tests have been increasingly used to estimate the state and strength parameters of soils (Lee et al. 2008).
