Site Data
Design parameters come from field data, and the path between them is usually manual, undocumented and repeated by hand on every project. These articles cover automating that path — parsing CPT and borehole records, applying correlations while being explicit about their limits, and keeping the derivation auditable.
7 articles
Soil classification from a grading curve
Reading D10, D30 and D60 off a grading curve is a logarithmic interpolation, not a linear one. A worked USCS classification with every number recomputed.
Suction caissons: the suction needed, and the limit
A caisson needs 182.7 kPa of suction to reach depth and lifts its soil plug at 371.8 kPa. Installability is the ratio of those two, and it is 2.04 here.
Jet grout columns: overlap, spacing and verticality
A secant wall 1.0583 m thick at the surface is 0.3555 m thick at 18 m and gone at 20 m, from a 1% verticality tolerance alone. The geometry, worked in full.
SPT: N60, (N1)60, and five routes to a friction angle
The same 18 blows become N60 of 11.5 or 20.4 depending on the rig. Five published correlations then spread the friction angle over eight degrees.
CPT interpretation: from qc and fs to Ic and su
A cone reading is not a soil type. Between them sit an area correction, two normalisations and a factor nobody measures — worked through on one sounding depth.
Effective stress: a worked profile, uplift and settlement
Total stress is arithmetic; pore pressure is a boundary condition you have to go and find. One profile, three questions, and the same subtraction behind each.
Atterberg limits: the flow curve and the plasticity chart
The liquid limit is a point read off a fitted flow curve, not a single reading. A full classification of a fine-grained soil, with every number recomputed.
Terms defined
Related topics
Soil Mechanics
The fundamentals everything else rests on: classification from grading and plasticity, the Mohr circle, and the arithmetic that has to be right first.
Ground Improvement
Ground improvement geometry: jet grout column overlap, spacing, verticality tolerance, and what has to be proven before treated ground is relied on in design.
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Groundwater flow and consolidation: Terzaghi and Biot theory, coupled formulations, time integration, drainage boundaries and pore pressure dissipation.
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Building engineering software engineers can trust: replacing spreadsheets with tested tools, reproducible calculations, versioning and documenting assumptions.