Cone Penetration Test (CPT)
Cone penetration test in the field
• Widely used for geotechnical site
characterization and in-situ determination
of soil properties.
• Simplicity, speed, and continuous profiling.
• Performed by pushing a penetrometer
with a conical tip and standard geometry
vertically into the ground at a standard
rate of 20 mm/s.
• A truck-mounted CPT rig.
• A hydraulic ram located inside the truck
pushes the cone into ground.
Inside a cone truck
Cone rod
Cone rod segments feeding
Cone rod sections
CPT records
Cone Penetration Test
• Widely used, particularly for soft clays, soft silts, and in
fine to medium sand deposits.
• Not well adapted to gravel deposits or to stiff/hard
cohesive deposits.
• A 60o cone with a base area of 10 cm2 (1.55 in2) was
pushed into the ground at a steady rate of about 20
mm/sec (about 0.8 in/sec), and the resistance to
penetration was measured.
• At least 4 types in use (ASTM D 3441 Standard list three)
– Mechanical (Dutch cone)
• A 35.7 mm diameter cone-shaped tip with a 60o Apex angle
• A 35.7 mm x 133.7 mm long cylindrical sleeve
– Electric friction
• Using strain gauges to measure qc (point resistance) and fs (side friction)
– Electric piezo/friction
• Measuring point resistance, sleeve friction and pore pressure
– Seismic cone
• A vibration sensor is included to obtain data to compute the shear wave
velocity from a surface hammer impact so that dynamic shear modulus
can computed.
• The test is done from a truck-mounted cone.
• The tip resistance qc = Total force acting on the
cone/10 cm2.
• The sleeve friction fs = Total frictional force on
the friction sleeve/150 cm2.
• Pore Water Pressure.
Hand-held penetrometer
Mechanical cone
Step sequence of the mechanical cone
system
• The cone system is stationary at position 1.
• The cone is advanced by pushing an inner rod to extrude
the cone tip and a short length of cone shaft. This action
measures the tip resistance qc.
• The outer shaft is now advanced to the cone base, and skin
resistance is measured as the force necessary to advance
the shaft qs.
• Now the cone and sleeve are advanced in combination to
obtain position 4 and to obtain a qtotal, which should be
approximately the sum of the qc + qs just measured. The
cone is now positioned for a new position 1.
Procedures and Components of the Cone
Penetration Test
(electric cone penetrometer)
Geometry and Measurements Taken by
Cone and Piezocone Penetrometers
Various Cone Penetrometers Including
Electric Friction and Piezocone Types
Seismic cone
Cross section of cone penetrometer
with a load cell (ASTM D-5778)
Correction Detail for Porewater
Pressures Acting on Cone Tip Resistance
The CPT test data
• Used to establish the allowable bearing capacity of
shallow foundation, and material properties.
• Supplemental information needs to be derived from
other exploration methods because CPT data can
be quite erratic.
• Some kind of resistance averaging must be done ----
user’s judgment and inspection of the several plots
• Friction ratio fr used mainly for soil classification Rf =
fr = fs/qc x 100 (%)
CPT logs
CPT correlations
• Soil classification (p. 105-106)
• For cohesive soils
– Undrained shear strength (p.107)
– Preconsolidation pressure (p.107)
– Overconsolidation ratio (p. 107)
• For cohesionless soils
– Relative density (pp. 104-105)
– Drained friction angle (p. 105)
Soil classification
Figure 3.30 Soil
behavior type chart
(Based on Robertson
et al., 1986 and
Robertson, 2010)
𝑠𝑙𝑒𝑒𝑣𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑓𝑠
𝐹𝑟 ( % )= ×10
𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒,𝑞𝑐
Correlations for Clays
• Undrained Shear Strength
– , -- total vertical stress,
Nk -- the bearing capacity factor. According to Mayne and
Kemper (1988), Nk = 15 (electric cone), Nk = 20 (mechanical
cone).
• Pre-consolidation Pressure
• Overconsolidation Ratio
Correlations for Sands
• Relative density (from tip resistance qc)
Correlations for Sands
• Drained Frictional Angle (from tip resistance qc)
Friction angle and tip resistance
Correlation between qc and N60
Example 1
• Given the CPT log
• Determine the cone resistance and friction
ratio at depths of 3, 5 and 7 m.
• What type of material is likely to be present at
these depths?
Depth qc (Mpa) fs Friction Ratio Soil Classification
(m) (kPa)
3 7 20 20/7000 0.29% Sand to silty sand
5 22 80 80/22000 0.36% Sand
7 22 140 140/22000 0.64% sand
Soil characterization
Example 2
• Given the data for a clay site (PI = 30%).
• Estimate the profile of undrained shear
strength with depth, considering the water
table to be at 2 m depth, but the clay above
GWT to be fully saturated due to capillary rise.
• What is the profile of implied OCR with depth?
Solution
𝐴 𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑒 𝑡h𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑒𝑖𝑔h𝑡 𝛾 𝑠𝑎𝑡 =18 𝑘𝑁 /𝑚 3
′
𝜎 0=𝜎 0 =18 𝑍 𝑍 <2𝑚 (𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑡h𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒)
𝑞𝑐 − 𝜎 0 𝑞 𝑐 − 18 𝑧
𝐶𝑢= = ( 𝑘𝑃𝑎 ) (𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒)
𝑁𝑘 15
(below ground water table)
′
𝜎 =18×2+18(𝑍 −2)−9.81×(𝑍 −2)=36+(18−9.81)×(𝑍 −2)=36+8.19×(𝑍 −2)≥2𝑚(𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒)
0
𝑞𝑐 − 𝜎 0
𝐶𝑢= ( 𝑘𝑃𝑎)
𝑁𝑘
(kPa) (NC clay)
OCR versus depth
Homework problem (CPT)
• Given the CPT log from the LA-1 relocation project (CPT-
192.txt). GWT is at the ground surface. Moist unit weight of the
soils is approximately 95 lbs/ft3 through all the soil strata.
– Classify the soil using the DOTD-adopted software at
https://www.ltrc.lsu.edu/research_products.html
(Soil_CPT_Packages.zip).
• Using Soil_CPT_Packages following the method proposed by Robertson et al.
(Soil_CPT_Packages.zip)
• Using the Probabilistic Region Estimation Method (Zhang and Tumay, 1999)
– Classify manually the soil at the depth of 20 ft using the Robertson
and Campanella method.
– Estimate the undrained shear strength Cu, pre-consolidation pressure
c, and OCR at the depth mentioned above.
