Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Publication
    Quality of conventional fixed piston samples of Norwegian soft clay
    It is well accepted that the quality of soft clay samples obtained using standard fixed piston samplers can be relatively poor and that block samples are necessary to yield very high quality samples. However for many practical projects it is not economically viable or physically practical to obtain block samples. In this project the quality of standard 54 mm composite piston samples of soft clay is examined by comparing six separate sets of 54 mm samples to parallel block sampling. Sampling and laboratory testing was carried out by three different organisations at a well characterised highly uniform soft clay site in Norway. As expected the work showed that the block samples behaved significantly differently from those obtained using the 54 mm sampler and were of higher quality. Block sample derived parameters were considerably different from those obtained from the 54 mm sample tests. However significant differences were also found between the different sets of 54 mm samples. Although the differences are less than when compared with block samples, the consequences of poor quality 54 mm sampling will be significant in engineering design. It is concluded that the differences are due to small details in the sampling operation such as the need to keep the piston effectively stationary at all times, to avoid overcoring and to handle the recovered sample carefully. If a well trained driller follows good quality practice, then relatively good samples can be obtained by the fixed piston sampler, which are suitable for analysis and design of routine engineering works.
    Scopus© Citations 19  2667
  • Publication
    Engineering characterisation of Norwegian glaciomarine silt
    Guidance is provided for geotechnical engineers designing civil engineering works in silty soils based on a detailed characterisation of a glaciomarine silt from Os in western Norway. It was found that these soils are susceptible to disturbance by good quality fixed piston tube sampling and care needs to be taken when using laboratory derived design parameters, particularly for consolidation and shear strength properties. A technique for assessing sample disturbance using shear wave velocity and suction measurements proved promising. Conventional techniques for determining soil strength from triaxial tests in silt are inappropriate due to the dilational nature of the material and more reliable and logical strength estimates can be made from a limiting strain criterion. Field vane data should be used with caution as measured strength, particularly remoulded values, may be high and it seems more reliable parameters can be derived from CPTU tests. One dimensional consolidation and creep of these silts can be modelled successfully by the well-known Janbu formulation. The behaviour of the Os silts does not fit easily into classical soil mechanics and published frameworks for soft soils. It seems the material is of “transitional” type and this work adds to the database of such soils which includes other natural silts and gap graded soils. For future work it is recommended that larger sample tubes (say 75 mm) with a very sharp cutting edge should be used in parallel with in situ CPTU testing.
      1716Scopus© Citations 20