Geomechanics and Engineering

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Assessment of the unconfined compression strength of unsaturated lateritic soil using the UPV

  • Wang, Chien-Chih (Department of Civil Engineering and Geomatics, Cheng Shiu University) ;
  • Lin, Horn-Da (Department of Civil and Construction Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology) ;
  • Li, An-Jui (Department of Civil and Construction Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology) ;
  • Ting, Kai-En (Department of Civil and Construction Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology)
  • Received : 2019.06.05
  • Accepted : 2020.11.03
  • Published : 2020.11.25
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Abstract

This study investigates the feasibility of using the results of the UPV (ultrasonic pulse velocity) test to assess the UCS (unconfined compressive strength) of unsaturated soil. A series of laboratory tests was conducted on samples of unsaturated lateritic soils of northern Taiwan. Specifically, the unconfined compressive test was combined with the pressure plate test to obtain the unconfined compressive strength and its matric suction (s) of the samples. Soil samples were first compacted at the designated water content and subsequently subjected to the wetting process for saturation and the following drying process to its target suction using the apparatus developed by the authors. The correlations among the UCS, s and UPV were studied. The test results show that both the UCS and UPV significantly increased with the matric suction regardless of the initial compaction condition, but neither the UCS nor UPV obviously varied when the matric suction was less than the air-entry value. In addition, the UCS approximately linearly increased with increasing UPV. According to the investigation of the test results, simplified methods to estimate the UCS using the UPV or matric suction were established. Furthermore, an empirical formula of the matric suction calculated from the UPV was proposed. From the comparison between the predicted values and the test results, the MAPE values of UCS were 4.52-9.98% and were less than 10%, and the MAPE value of matric suction was 17.3% and in the range of 10-20%. Thus, the established formulas have good forecasting accuracy and may be applied to the stability analysis of the unsaturated soil slope. However, further study is warranted for validation.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This study was sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan. This financial support is gratefully acknowledged. The authors would also like to thank Mr. H. Y. Chen, the technical staff of National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, for his assistance in laboratory testing and graduate student Y. H. Chang for his assistance in preparing this paper. Dr. Johnson H. S. Kung's valuable advises in this study is also highly appreciated.

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