A. Eslami Kenarsari, R. Jamshidi Chenari, A. Eslami,
Volume 11, Issue 1 (5-2013)
Among the different ways of in-situ soil investigation, cone penetration test data are selected to evaluate the spatial variability
of geomaterials and the scale of fluctuations is chosen to evaluate the correlation structure of CPT data. In this regard six case
studies in sandy materials from Australia, U.S.A. and Iraq are selected. Various techniques for the calculation of the scale of
fluctuation of geotechnical parameters are suggested in literature e.g. VXP, SAI, AMF, BLM and VRF without any preference or
privilege for any specific procedure. In order to isolate the stochastic portion of cone tip resistance, deterministic trend was first
removed by regression analysis. This study suggests that quadratic trend removal is more suitable for selected CPT data
soundings. The closeness of the estimated scale of fluctuation using different approaches is assessed too. Mean value of the scale
of fluctuation by five established methods ranges between 0.44 to 1.52 meter for six different cases and the coefficient of
variation for the scale of fluctuation calculated by these methods varies between 12 to 27 % showing that available established
methods produce almost compatible and comparable results.