Influence of drainage conditions on piezocone penetration mechanism in offshore clays

ABSTRACT

CPTu (piezocone penetration test) is widely used in engineering practice to determine various parameters of clays under partially drained conditions. However, most existing research is based on undrained or fully drained conditions for clays, leading to underestimation or overestimation of soil strength. By applying the Eulerian-Lagrangian large deformation finite element method to analyse the water-soil interaction, the CPTu driving mechanism in offshore saturated soft clays under different drainage conditions is revealed. An advanced hypoplastic constitutive model for clays is used to simulate the nonlinear behaviour of kaolin under different drainage conditions. The generation, accumulation, and dissipation of excess pore water pressure under different drainage conditions are analysed, as well as the influence of excess pore water pressure on cone tip resistance and the effective stress of the soil during the CPTu penetration process.

KEYWORDS:

• Large deformation finite element analysis
• piezocone penetration test
• normalised permeability
• partially drained
• water-soil interaction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.