Estimation of Some Mechanical Soil Properties from Static and Dynamic Plate Load Tests

Abstract

When the depth of stressed soil is rather small, Plate Load Test (PLT) becomes the most efficient test to estimate the soil properties for design purposes. Among these properties, modulus of subgrade reaction is the most important one that usually employed in roads and concrete pavement design. Two methods are available to perform PLT: static and dynamic methods. Static PLT is usually adopted due to its simplicity and time saving to be performs in comparison with cyclic (dynamic) method. The two methods are described in ASTM standard. In this paper the effect of the test method used in PLT in estimation of some mechanical soil properties was distinguished via a series of both test methods applied in a same site. The comparison of the test results between both methods showed that the dynamic (cyclic) method gives lower values of soil properties than the static one does.

Keywords

• Plate load test, modulus of subgrade reaction, dynamic, static.