Estimation of Strength Parameters of Solid Waste Materials by Corn Penetration and Spiral Pile Pull Out Tests

Abstract

There are many kinds of geomaterials such as mixtures with clay, silt, sand or gravel. Solid waste materials are also classified as a geomaterial. Generally, strength parameters of cohesion and frictional angle on the geomaterials are obtained from direct shear test or triaxial compression test. It is difficult to perform with ordinary laboratory tests on samples including a large size of soil particles or waste materials with different size and shape, especially on in-situ condition. The authors developed a large size direct shear test for solid waste material. However, it takes a time for preparing specimen and performing the in-situ test. In this study, the corn penetration test and the spiral pile pull out test were performed for estimating strength constants of various kinds of geomaterials as a simple method. Cohesion of geomaterial is obtained from spiral pile pull out test with different length of the pile. Internal frictional angle is calculated from the cohesion and test result of corn penetration test with Terzaghi bearing capacity formula. Estimated strength parameters by proposed method were compared with the values obtained from the direct shear tests. The applicability of this method is confirmed based on the test results of various geomaterials such as sand, decomposed granite soil, and solid waste materials in laboratory. This proposed method is also applied on in-situ ground.