| Abstract: | The cone penetration test (CPT) provides profiles of the tip resistance, sleeve friction, and pore water pressure encountered while penetrating the subsurface. These parameters are used either directly or indirectly to classify the soil types present and to obtain geotechnical design parameters. However, fundamental discrepancies exist in the manner by which these parameters are measured. This paper describes the results of a study that shows the sleeve friction measurement introduces unnecessary redundancy due to the length of the standard friction sleeve compared to the measurement increment. Further, the high sleeve length to measurement increment ratio results in filtering and smoothing of the friction data, thereby causing the variability of the friction between the soil and the cone sleeve to be underestimated. The importance of understanding the role of the sleeve length on measurements is demonstrated using synthetically generated friction profiles and estimating the profiles that would be measured using sleeves of different lengths. Differences in how the soils are classified as a function of the sleeve length used to obtain each profile are illustrated. Solutions are presented to validate the synthetic sleeve friction profiles, to demonstrate the filtering and smoothing effects of the friction sleeve on the data, and to explain the implications of the sleeve length on soil classification. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
