The Engineering Behaviour of Cemented Marine Carbonate Soils

Cone penetration testing (CPT) is one of the most used site characterisation tools in geotechnical engineering. In offshore areas dominated by carbonate sediments, CPT is extensively used to characterise material types and assess their strength and flow characteristics. However, unlike for non-carbonate sediments where large number of empirical relationships are available correlating the CPT response with the corresponding soil behaviour and associated engineering parameters, there is still a lack of data correlating the CPT response with engineering behaviour of carbonate sediments. This paper presents CPT responses for different types of marine carbonate sediments. First, a brief background on carbonate sediments including key terminologies used and their characteristics in comparison to their non-carbonate counterparts are discussed. This is followed by examples of CPT data from major offshore project sites representing different type of materials ranging from uncemented fine grained (Muds and Silts) and coarse grained (Sand) sediments to variably cemented carbonate materials. The CPT results are then used, in combination with laboratory test data, to evaluate the suitability of standard soil behaviour type charts and indices available in the literature. Typical zone of results for carbonates sediments as a function of normalized cone parameters are also presented for reference purposes. Some challenges on the direct use CPT based methods to engineering analyses for carbonate sediments and the key areas of research from a practical engineering perspective are also briefly discussed.

The engineering behaviour of cemented marine carbonate soils: J. P. Carter & D. W. Airey, in: Geotechnical engineering: emerging trends in design and practice, ed K.R. Saxena, (Balkema), 1994, pp 65–101