Numerical simulation of CPT cone penetration in sand

Numerical simulation of cone penetration in sand is performed by means of a computationally efficient critical state model implemented in an explicit-integration finite element code. Its main advantage, compared to other published studies employing simpler soil models such as the Drucker-Prager, is that sand compressibility can be described with a single set of model parameters, irrespective of the stress level and the sand relative density. Calibration of the constitutive model is based on back-analysis of published centrifuge tests results, and consequently the predictions of the numerical methodology are compared against independent tests. Additional analyses are performed for proposing a new simplified formula to correlate the cone penetration resistance with the in situ sand relative density.