Application of Dynamic Cone Penetration Test to Gypseous Soils

Abstract

Dynamic cone penetration test (DCPT) is a fast, economical and easy to conduct. It is widely used to assess the strength of natural and compacted soils. The device is introduced in the 1950s. However, it was newly introduced in Iraq. This study aims to evaluate the potentials of DCP in geotechnical explorations in the gypseous soil since it covers a large area of the country and to obtain correlations with the California bearing ratios (CBR) and investigating the effect of gypsum on the CBR-DCP relationship. Field and Laboratory tests were conducted on soil sample retrieved from six sites with different gypsum contents (28-41) %. Laboratory tests include performing CBR and DCP tests in a cylindrical mold. A statistical analysis of the results shows that gypsum content is an affecting factor on DCP and good CBR-DCP correlations on gypsum content were obtained.

Keywords

• Dynamic Cone Penetrometer (DCP)
• California bearing ratio (CBR)
• gypseous soil
• penetration rate (PR).