Predicting the consolidation settlement for a structure using the coefficient of

consolidation based on sieve # 40 and sieve # 200

Presented by: Shujah Khan

Supervisor: Dr. Badee Alshameri

Department Of Geotechnical Engineering,

Nust Institute of Civil Engineering, NICE
National University of Sciences and Technology, NUST
Content

 Introduction

 Problem Statement

 Literature review

 Aims and Objectives

 Scope of the Research

 Methodology of research

 References
Introduction
 The consolidation characteristics can be obtained by conducting a one-
dimensional consolidation test using oedometer apparatus. However, the
determination of coefficient of consolidation of soil from oedometer test require
considerable time and effort. Therefore, several attempts have been made to
predict the value of compression index and coefficient of consolidation from
empirical correlation linked with the index properties which are relatively easier
and faster.
 Determining the coefficient of consolidation (Cc), which is required for predicting
the rate of settlement of structures founded on cohesive soil deposits in order to
check the settlement criteria of foundation design.
Problem Statement

This research is aimed at evaluating a correlation of coefficient of consolidation

with basic index properties using fine grained soil according to Unified soil
classification system, USCS (material passing sieve # 200). For the specified region
of Pakistan, a correlation of this kind is required to determine the consolidation
settlement for a structure using coefficient of consolidation.
Literature Review

 Atterberg limits test is performed on material passing through sieve # 40 which

also include fine sand.
 For determining consistency limits for fine grained soil, actual Atterberg limits are
compromised using sieve # 40.
 In order to determine actual results, soil sample used for Atterberg limits should
be passing through sieve # 200 which is clay and silt according to USCS.
 Following are some researches on relation of soil index properties with
consolidation;
Unified Soil Classification System (USCS)

Gravel Sand Silt and Clay

Boulders Cobbles

Coarse Fine Coarse Medium Fine

300 mm 75 mm No.4 No.200

4.75 mm 0.075 mm
19 mm No.10 No.40
2.0 mm 0.425 mm

Fine sand + Silt &

Definition of Grain Size Clay
(Atterberg Limits)
Sr.
Paper Title Author Keywords Findings
No.

Methods for determination - S. K. Shukla Coefficient of  Standard methods for evaluating coefficient of
of the coefficient of consolidation; Cohesive consolidation of clayey soils; i.e. the logarithm of time
consolidation and field - N. Sivakugan soils; Oedometer test; (Casagrande) and the square root of time (Taylor).
1. observations of time rate Settlement; Terzaghi  Since these two methods use the later part of the
- B. M. Das
of settlement consolidation theory; consolidation curve, the values of Cv are influenced
Time rate of settlement by the secondary compression effects, which generally
cause to decrease the values of Cv.
 However, both methods have the advantage of giving
a visual picture of the consolidation process as the test
 The Cv values obtained from alternative methods can be more realistic because
proceeds.
these methods use the middle part of the laboratory consolidation curve for
 The Inflection point method involves only the
accomplishing the fitting and thus avoids the effect of secondary consolidation.
 The recommended method for determining Cv is the Revised logarithm of time identification of an inflection point on the
fitting method suggested by Robinson and Allam, which is based on the compression versus log time curve, which corresponds
Casagrande and the inflection point methods (value obtained is greater than that to about 70% primary consolidation. Values obtained
yielded by both the standard methods) so the calculated settlement rate will be for Cv are similar to Casagrande method.
faster and more close to field values.  The inflection point method does not require the
 Major limitations of these methods are that they require more data reduction effort definition of the beginning and end of the primary
and a better trained user. In fact, most of the methods require trial solutions and consolidation stage.
suggest more complex procedures than the standard procedures.  Although alternative methods are based on rational
approaches, none of these methods can completely
replace the limitations of standard methods.
Sr.
Paper Title Author Keywords Findings
No.

Prediction of coefficient of - Mamta Mittal Coefficient of  Used machine learning models namely Multiple
consolidation in soil using - Suresh Chandra Satapathy consolidation; Linear Regression (MLR), Artificial Neural
machine learning techniques - Vaibhav Pal Machine learning; Network (ANN), Support Vector Regression
- Basant Agarwal Prediction (SVR), and Adaptive Network based Fuzzy
2.
- Lalit Mohan Goyal Inference System (ANFIS).
- Pritee Parwekar  Various feature selection techniques such as
Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection
Operator algorithm (LASSO), Random Forests -
Recursive Feature Elimination (RF-RFE), and
Mutual information have also been applied.
 Experiments are performed on the dataset
 5-fold cross validation has considered to assess the proposed models as well as Python
collected on the 534 soil samples.
3.4, Scikitlearn 0.19.0 and Matlab r2018a has been used for experimentation work.  This dataset consists of thirteen independent
 The effectiveness of these predicting models has enhanced by using several feature factors namely depth of sample, clay, moisture
content, bulk density, dry density, specific
selections such as LASSO, MI, RF-RFE. gravity, void ratio, porosity, degree of saturation,
 It has observed that a hybrid approach of ANFIS and LASSO is the best for prediction liquid limit, plastic limit, plasticity index, and
liquidity index are considered to analyze the
of the coefficient of consolidation of a soil compared with other approaches.
relationship with dependent factor, coefficient of
 This study can be helpful in reduction of the cost of implementation of laboratory consolidation of soil.
experiments to determine the coefficient of consolidation.
Sr.
No.
Paper Title Author Keywords Findings

Prediction of Consolidation - Kok Shien Ng Prediction;  Correlation of Compression index and coefficient of
Characteristics from Index - Yee Ming Chew Consolidation; consolidation with the index properties.
3. Properties - Nur Izzati Ahmad Lazim Index properties  Five remolded samples are tested for their physical
properties as well as their consolidation
characteristics.
 Several attempts have been made to predict the value
of compression index and coefficient of
consolidation from empirical correlation linked with
 Index properties are correlated with Cc and Cv to determine the best correlated the index properties which are relatively easier and
parameter using simple linear regression. In addition, multiple regression analysis
faster.
was conducted to determine two most controlling variables in predicting the Cc and
Cv.  The LL test was carried out with fall cone test while
 Results show the increase of Cc with the increase of index properties except the plastic limit, PL test was carried with rolling thread
fine content, F%. method.
 From the Single regression analysis, the liquid limit is best correlated with the  From the oedometer data, the void ratio curve on a
compression index. semi-log has been plotted where the tangent of linear
portion of the pressure is a value of compression
index, Cc. The coefficient of consolidation, Cv was
 Subsequent Multiple regression analysis shows that the correlation of LL and Cc calculated using Taylor’s Method obtained from the
can be further improved with the addition of another index property which is the plot of square root time-deformation curve.
specific gravity, Gs in which the coefficient of determination, R 2 is 0.998.
Sr.
No.
Paper Title Author Keywords Findings

Prediction of Compression - Dr. Rakesh Kumar Consolidation;  Prediction of compression index with the
Index (Cc) of Fine Grained Compression Index (Cc); help of basic soil properties namely Liquid Limit
4. Remolded Soils from Basic - Dr. P. K. Jain Remolded soil; (LL), Plasticity Index (PI), Optimum Moisture
Soil Properties - Pundreek Dwivedi Correlation; Settlement; Content (OMC), Maximum Dry Density (MDD)
Linear Regression and Differential Free Swell (DFS).
 The single and multiple linear regression analysis
 Furthermore, correlations proposed by Skempton (1944) and Nagaraj and Murthy were carried out on the results of the tests to
(1985) are quite close to the observed results, whereas Nishida (1956) and Terzaghi and correlate Compression Index (Cc) with
Peck (1967) are overestimating the results and that may lead to conservative design of combination of basic soil parameters .
footing which may not be economical.  Compression Index (Cc) is one of the parameter
that is used in settlement estimation. High value
of Cc means large settlement. The compression
index (Cc) of soils is preferred as its value does
not change with the change in confining pressure
for normally consolidated clays.
 Other correlations rely upon one or two
parameters only, whereas, the compressibility
depends on other factors also.
 It is found that correlation using other basic soil
properties like OMC, MDD and DFS also give
very good coefficient of determination (R 2).
 Sr.
Paper Title Author Keywords Findings
No.

Soil Compression Index - Amardeep Singh soil compressibility  23 Soil samples were collected from different Indian
Prediction Model for characteristics, hydropower projects.
Fine Grained Soils - Shahid Noor plasticity index, liquid  Prediction of compression index with the
5. limit, specific gravity, help of basic soil properties namely Liquid Limit
compression index, (LL), Plasticity Index (PI), Compression indices.
fine grained soils.  To predict the compression index (Cc), several
regression analyses were carried out using the
different variables of soil index and basic properties
and accuracy of each model was tested by comparing
the predicted values with actual values and calculating
the statistical parameter root mean squared error
(RME).
 The results show that compression index (Cc)
correlated well with liquid limit and plasticity. The
model results were compared with the actual
compression index values, as determined by
laboratory tests, and were found to be in good
agreement. The compression index values for the
collected samples were also determined using the
 Actual Compression Index, Cc versus predicted Compression Index, (Cc)p available models in literature. The results indicate that
obtained by (a) proposed model, (b) model proposed by Skempton (1944), and (c) the model can predict the soil compressibility values
model proposed by Terzaghi & Peck model (1967). more accurately.
 Sr.
Paper Title Author Keywords Findings
No.

Compression Index of Atterberg limits,  Study made to characterize the compressibility

- Vinod P.
Highly Plastic Clays – compressibility, behavior of a remoulded, highly plastic, marine soil.
6. an Empirical Correlation - Bindu J. highly plastic clays,  The typical soil of the region is soft black or grey
oedometer marine clay.
 Apart from odeometer tests, all the soils were
tested for their Atterberg limits and grain size
 Using the results of the present study as well as those reported by Sridharan and distribution characteristics.
Nagaraj (2000), a generalized compression index equation applicable to soils  The odeometer tests carried out on eighteen samples
having a very wide range of plasticity characteristics has also been developed: of this soil indicate that e-log p relationship is linear,
the values of compression index being much higher
than the reported values.
 In all the analyses except that done with porosity,
linear regression yielded the highest value of
correlation coefficient.
 The analysis carried out as part of the present study
has shown that shrinkage index which is the numerical
difference between liquid limit and shrinkage limit is
the most suitable generalization parameter to
characterize the compressibility behavior of this
highly plastic soil.
Sr.
Paper Title Author Keywords Findings
No.

Correlations between index - F. M. Abdrabbo clay, compression  Correlations between index properties, natural water
tests and compressibility of index, liquid limit, content, in-situ void ratio with compressibility
7. Egyptian clays - M. A. Mahmoud natural water characteristics are presented.
content, void ratio  The undisturbed clay samples, extracted by thin wall
Shelby tubes which are presumably fully saturated,
were tested using the conventional one dimensional
consolidometer.
 Correlations relating the index tests, natural water content and initial void ratio  Linear Regression Analysis used.
with the compressibility of Egyptian clays are established. Terzaghi and Peck  The compression index Cc obtained from test results
(1948) expression for estimating compression index of undisturbed clay varies between 0.1 and 1.1, but 90% of these values
overestimates the compression index of Egyptian clay by about 50%. lies between 0.1 and 0. 5. Linear regression analysis
indicates that the compression index Cc of the clay
may be correlated to the liquid limit WL as;

 Correlation of compression index Cc with the natural

water content Wn by the following equation,

 The compression index Cc of Egyptian clays increases

as the in-situ void ratio increases, natural water
content increases, and liquid limit increases.
Sr.
Paper Title Author Keywords Findings
No.

Statistical Estimation Of Bushra S. Al-Busoda compression index,  The results of routine laboratory tests of a large
The Compressibity Of recompression number of databases of Baghdad soil were correlated
Baghdad Cohesive Soil Abbas Jawad Al-Taie index, correlation, with more sophisticated laboratory consolidation
initial void ratio, results by conducting simple and multiple regression
8.
natural moisture analyses.
content, total unit  Soil parameters used in the database were natural
weight, dry unit water content (wn), initial void ratio (e o), total unit
weights.
weight (t), dry unit weight (d), liquid limit (LL),
plastic limit (PL), plasticity index (Ip), effective
overburden pressure (Po), compression index (Cc),
and recompression index (Cr).
 A simple and multiple regression analysis were
adopted and a parametric study was carried out in
order to obtain the most suitable and practically
applicable relationships.
 It was concluded that the compression index of
Baghdad cohesive soil cannot be estimated from
Atterberg limits and the better values of compression
and recompression indices of Baghdad soil can be
obtained when more than one index property is used in
the regression analysis.
Aims and Objectives
 The main objective of this research is to determine the coefficient of consolidation
(Cc), which is required for predicting the rate of settlement of structures.
 This research is aimed at evaluating a correlation of coefficient of consolidation
with natural water content (wn), Liquid limit (L.L), Plasticity index (P.I) based on
material passing sieve #40 and sieve #200.
Methodology of Research
Material Collection

Laboratory tests

Gradation Atterberg Limits Coefficient of Consolidation, Cc

Data Analysis Test codes

Gradation ASTM C 136

Atterberg limits ASTM D 4318

Evaluating a correlation
Coefficient of ASTM D 2435 – 04
Consolidation
Discussion and Conclusion
References
 S. Shukla, N. Sivakugan & B. Das (2009) Methods for determination of the coefficient of
consolidation and field observations of time rate of settlement — an overview, International Journal
of Geotechnical Engineering, 3:1, 89-108
 Mamta Mittal et al. (2021) Prediction of coefficient of consolidation in soil using machine learning
techniques.
 Kok Shien Ng et al. (2018) Prediction of Consolidation Characteristics from Index Properties.
 Dr. Rakesh Kumar et al. (2015) Prediction of Compression Index (Cc) of Fine Grained Remolded
Soils from Basic Soil Properties.
 Amardeep Singh et al. (2012) Soil Compression Index Prediction Model for Fine Grained Soils.
 Vinod P. et al. (2010) Compression Index of Highly Plastic Clays – an Empirical Correlation.
 F. M. Abdrabbo et al. (1990) Correlations between index tests and compressibility of Egyptian clays
 Bushra S. Al-Busoda et al. (2010) Statistical Estimation Of The Compressibity Of Baghdad
Cohesive Soil