Determination of soil property characteristic values from standard penetration tests

Characteristic values of soil property is a key element in geotechnical design guidelines, particularly for probability-based design codes, and it is usually defined as a pre-specified quantile, such as a lower 5% quantile in Eurocode 7, of the probability distribution of soil property. Such a probabilistic characterization requires a large number of data points from laboratory and/or in situ tests, which are usually not available for most geotechnical projects, especially for those with medium or small sizes. For most projects, only a limited number of standard penetration test (SPT) N values are generally available. It is therefore rather challenging to determine the probability distribution and characteristic values for geotechnical design. To address this challenge, this paper presents a Bayesian equivalent sample approach that determines the probability distribution and characteristic value of effective friction angle and Young’s modulus using only a limited number of SPT N values. Two case histories are used to illustrate the approach.Non UBCUnreviewedThis collection contains the proceedings of ICASP12, the 12th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering held in Vancouver, Canada on July 12-15, 2015. Abstracts were peer-reviewed and authors of accepted abstracts were invited to submit full papers. Also full papers were peer reviewed. The editor for this collection is Professor Terje Haukaas, Department of Civil Engineering, UBC Vancouver.FacultyGraduat