Combined analysis of electrical resistivity and geotechnical SPT blow counts for the safety assessment of fill dam

Electrical resistivity survey and the geotechnical SPT blow counts (N value) method were simultaneously analyzed to investigate the stability of a center-core type earth-fill dam against the seepage phenomenon. The coupling of these heterogeneous field methods provided a chance to understand the status of underground material by comparing the geophysical and geotechnical view. The analysis shows that the zones with low resistivity value generally have low N value, which means low stiffness. However, some zones with a high resistivity pattern are not accompanied by an increase of its N value, and are even showing a lower N value. These results imply that one should be careful to directly correlate resistivity value with the real status of the core material of a fill dam. And a highly resistive zone may be in poor status due to the effect of increase of resistivity value as a result of the piping condition. Additional laboratory tests show that there is a deficiency of fine soil particles believed as the clay at the troubled region, which means an increase in resistivity value. Therefore, multiple explorations should be planned to reduce the uncertainty in application of geophysical methods to dam safety evaluation in order to compensate the resistivity information of core material.