Development of electrical resistivity vibration penetration test (ER-VPT)

Abstract

The estimation of liquefiable soils and potential mapping of liquefaction are very important for city planners, building owners, and engineers to see liquefaction prone areas and hazard levels. If the proposed structure is in a liquefaction hazard zone, additional measures against liquefaction can be taken. We propose a new method, electrical resistivity vibration probe penetration test (ER-VPT), which utilizes a vibration probe, accelerometer, pore-pressure meter and electrical resistivity measurement, to determine the liquefiable soils. We did experiments in laboratory and field using ER-VPT and got successful results. The ER-VPT is different from other tests commonly used in liquefaction prediction such as standard penetration test (SPT) and cone penetration test (CPT). This method uses dynamic response of soils for liquefaction prediction.