Prediction of long-term pore pressure dissipation behavior by short-term piezocone dissipation test

Abstract

The coefficient of consolidation determined from piezocone dissipation test and common interpretation methods makes the predicted dissipation curve match only at 50% degree of dissipation of the measured dissipation curve. It makes it difficult to predict the long-term pore pressure dissipation behavior of in-situ soft deposits. Therefore, based on the authors' previous result [Kim YS, Lee SR, Kim YT. Application of an optimization design technique for determining the coefficient of consolidation by using piezocone test data. Computers and Geotechnics 1997;21(4): 77-93] in which an optimized coefficient of consolidation reflects well the measured dissipation trend over the input degree of dissipation range, a systematic way of predicting a more realistic pore pressure dissipation behavior at high degree of dissipation with the optimized coefficient of consolidation is proposed. It was found that, relatively over the wide range of dissipation, the optimized coefficient of consolidation is more consistent than those determined by other researchers' methods. Applied to some real examples, it is also shown that the dissipation behavior of pore water pressure at a high degree of the dissipation range can be predicted well if the coefficient of consolidation is determined using the optimization technique with the data up to around 50% dissipation. Thus, it is expected that the proposed method saves time and expenses in conducting dissipation tests in the held. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.