A numerical study on the applicability of the piezocone interpretation methods for hydraulic conductivity of clays

During the last three decades, attempts have been made to obtain genuine interpretation methods for estimating the flow characteristics of fine grained soils through piezocone dissipation tests. Interpretation of these dissipation tests is however often based on various simplifYing assumptions and has not been extensively calibrated against experimental or numerical results. In this research, piezocone penetration and dissipation tests are modelled numerically using large deformation finite element analysis with contact formulation. The effectiveness of the two widely used interpretation methods of Teh & Houlsby (1991) and Sully & Campanella (1994) is studied. It is found that the reliability of these methods is significantly affected by the assumptions adopted. In addition, irrespective of their accuracy, the interpretation methods in the literature are found to be only applicable to normally consolidated to lightly overconsolidated soils.