MINI DCPT AND ITS USES

Abstract

The year 1587, has been declared by the U.N. as the Year 'of Shelter for Hoiiteless", meaning thereby providing homes to millions of homeless at the lowest cost possible. Being Civil Engineers; it is then oir responsibility to devise novel and cheep construdtion and testing techniques to make the programme a big success. One such attempt has been made in this work by the author. Dynamic Cone Penetration' Test is normally a part of any geotechnical investigation, carried out for design of foundation in coarse grained deposits. However, this test is unsuitable for rural geotechnblogical investigations because of the heavy weight of the . equipment thereby requiring a lot of labour for transportation and testing. It thus makes the cost of conducting the test noncommen-surate with the total cost of making a house in the village. Therefore, keeping in mind the principles of DCPT a Mini DCPT has been designed and fabricated to suit the requirements of village geotechnology. The complete equip-ment is lighter, quicker and portable, thus requiring only two persons for transportation and conduction of tests at the site. Based on the data collected from an extensive field testing programme, carried out all over'Roorkee a correla-tion has be0n developed between the Mini DCPT and actual DCPT values? - Thus, knowing the penetration values for actual DCPT from the 'given .relationship the soil properties can be found out using standard correlations and foundation can be designed.