An empirical evaluation of pressuremeter test data

Abstract

In situ pressuremeter tests have in recent years come into wide use in the determination of the parameters to be used for foundation design. Although theoretically correct analytical expressions have been developed for the radial expansion pressure versus radial strain relationship, these are generally cumbersome and difficult to use and in practice a graphical procedure is commonly used to derive the maximum undrained shear stress and the undrained modulus value from the test data.To overcome the disadvantages that this graphical procedure involves an empirically-derived analytical relationship based on Kondner's hyperbolic stress–strain relationship is presented here, by means of which all the derived parameters can be obtained simply and without recourse to graphical construction.