Abstract
Multiple series of laboratory pressure chamber tests were conducted to examine the penetration resistance NSW of Swedish weight sounding tests in sandy soils. The effects of overburden stress, relative density and grain composition were examined. Similar to the empirical formula for SPT N-value adopted previously by Cubrinovski and Ishihara (1999), the data of Swedish sounding tests were arranged and the empirical formula for the NSW-value is proposed. This paper also addresses whether the void ratio range is a good parameter in characterizing the effects of grain composition. By combining the two empirical formulae for the NSW-value and SPT N-value, an empirical relation between the NSW-value and SPT N-value was also derived, which may be used to convert the penetration resistance from one to another. The empirical formula thus derived implies that the relation between the two kinds of penetration resistances is dependent upon the grain composition of soils. The proposed formulae are found to be fairly comparable with the field data with a reasonable degree of coincidence.
