Evaluation of cohesionless soil porosity using electrical resistivity measurements

Electrical resistivity measurement is being used increassingly to asses phisical properties of soils and other porous materials. Recent application of this method to geotechnical and environmental site characterization has generated a wide collection of new apparatus for estimating soil electrical resistivity (Abu-Hassanein et al. 1996, Fukue et al. 2001, Sreedeep et al. 2004, McCarter et al. 2005). This study demonstrates the efficiency of electrical resistivity measurements in laboratory investigations. Electrical data from laboratory tests permitted to estimate porosity of sandy soils and shown that investigated sand samples obey Archie’s law