• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.537-546
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• 2002

In this study an automatic soil hardness measuring system mountable on agricultural tractors was developed to improve the accuracy of manual soil hardness testers by a constant penetrating rate, right direction of the cone-penetrometer and the isolation of vibration from the operator. This was necessary to supply similar experimental condition for performance test of new model and comparative experiment. The results of the study are summaried as follows; 1. The system consisted of a sensing part of soil hardness, a driving part of the measuring system and an attaching part between the tractor and the measuring system. 2. The allowable limit value of the system developed was set to 392N to protect from breaking the serve motor and the coupling used in this system. 3. The driving shaft penetrated into soil by 0.3m to measure soil hardness. The soil hardness was measured at the depth of 0.3m from the soil surface but the penetrating work was stopped and the driving shaft was pulled out to protect the system when the value of the soil hardness was too big on foreign substances like stones or straws. 4. Two values measured by automatic measuring system developed in this research and manual penetrometer were compared by statistics hypothesis testing method. When two people measured the soil hardness at the depth of 0.1 and 0.15m by manual cone penetrometer, there was no relationship between two values by two people but the values at the same depths by automatic measuring system developed showed similarity. The automatic system, therefore, developed in this research was proper for measuring soil hardness.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.31 no.11
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• pp.25-31
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• 2015

Elastic behavior of the railway roadbed which supports the repeating dynamic loads of the train is mainly affected by the shear modulus of the upper roadbed. Therefore, shear wave velocity estimation of the uniformly compacted roadbed can be used to estimate the elastic behavior of the railway roadbed. The objective of this study is to suggest the relationship between the dynamic cone penetration index (DCPI) and the shear wave velocity ($V_s$) of the upper roadbed in order to estimate the shear wave velocity by using the dynamic cone penetration test (DCPT). To ensure the reliability of the relationship, the dynamic cone penetration test and the measurement of the shear wave velocity are conducted on the constructed upper roadbed. As a method for measurement of the shear wave velocity, cross hole is used and then the dynamic cone penetration test is performed at a center point between the source and the receiver of the cross hole. As a result of the correlation of the dynamic cone penetration index and the shear wave velocity at the same depths, the shear wave velocity is estimated as a form of involution of the dynamic cone penetration index with a determinant coefficient above 0.8. The result of this study can be used to estimate both the shear wave velocity and the strength of the railway roadbed using the dynamic cone penetrometer.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.1C
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• pp.29-38
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• 2011

The smaller diameter cone penetrometer has been widely used to estimate the characteristics of local area due to high vertical resolution. The half-bridge cirucits have been adopted to measure the mechnical strength of soil through the smaller diameter cone penetrometer due to the limitation of the areas for configuring the full-bridge circuit. The half-bridge circuit, however, is known as being easily affected to the temperature variation. The objective of this study suggests the temperature-compensated method in mini-cones. The diameter and length of the mini-cone is designed to 15mm and 56mm. The load cell of the mini-cone is extended about 54mm on the behind of the mini-cone to reflect the only temperature variation. The full-bridge circuit is installed to measure the temperature-compensated values in the mini-cone and the half-bridge circuit is also organized to compare the temperature compensated values with uncompensated values. The seasonal variation tests are performed to define the effect of temperature variation under summer and winter temperature condition. The densification tests are also carried out to investigate temperature effects during penetration. The measured mechanical resistances with temperature-compensated method show more reliable and reasonable values than those measured by thermal uncompensated system. This study suggests that the temperature-compensated method of the mini-cone may be a useful technique to obtain the more reliable resistances with minimizing the temperature effect.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.117-125
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• 2008

The detection of thin-layered soil is important in soft soils to evaluate the soil behavior. The smaller diameter cone penetrometer have been commonly used to detect the layer with increasing sensitivity. The objective of this study is to detect the thin-layered soil using cone resistance and electrical resistance. The cone resistivity penetration test (CRPT) is developed to evaluate the cone tip resistance and electrical resistance at the tip. The CRPT is a micro-cone which has a $0.78cm^2$ in projected area. The application test is conducted in a laboratory large-scale consolidometer (calibration chamber). The kaolinite, sand and water are mixed to make the specimen at the liquid limit of 46% using a slurry mixer. It takes two months for the consolidation of the specimen. After consolidation, the CRPT test is carried out. Furthermore the standard CPT results are compared with the electrical resistance measured at the tip in the field. This study suggests that the CRPT may be a useful tool for detecting thin-layers in soft soils.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 1998.06a
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• pp.79-83
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• 1998

This study was conducted to delineate plume occurred in hazardous waste disposal site. At first, CPT (Cone Penetrometer Test) rig and HydroPunch were used to collect depth-discrete groundwater samples in concerned area. However, it was not capable of sampling the groundwater due to the cone refusal where the residual clay are layered at nominal depth through the aquifer. Alternatively, a number of temporary wells were installed after each of locations was penetrated using a modified steel cone functioned by CPT rig. The samples taken from those of wells were characterized by GCMS and GCFID, which revealed that sulfolane and thiolane were mainly presented. Subsequent analyses performed for the samples taken from permanent nest piezometers consistently demonstrated that possible plume boundary can be presented in the study area where contaminants were found as low as detection limit or levels of not-detectable.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.177-190
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• 2010

This paper presents the details of indigenous development of the piezovibrocone and calibration chamber. The developed cone has a cylindrical friction sleeve of $150cm^2$ surface area, capped with a $60^{\circ}$ apex angle conical tip of $15cm^2$ cross sectional area. It has a hydraulic shaker, coupled to the cone penetrometer with a linear displacement unit. The hydraulic shaker can produce cyclic load in different types of wave forms (sine, Hover sine, triangular, rectangular and external wave) at a range of frequency 1-10 Hz with maximum amplitude of 10 cm. The piezovibrocone can be driven at the standard rate of 2 cm/sec using a loading unit of 10 ton capacity. The calibration chamber is of size $2m{\times}2m{\times}2m$. The sides of the chamber and the top as well as the bottom portions are rigid. It has a provision to apply confining pressure (to a maximum value of $4kg/cm^2$) through the flexible rubber membrane inlined with the side walls of the calibration chamber. The preliminary static as well as dynamic cone penetration tests have been done sand in the calibration chamber. From the experimental results, an attempt has been made to classify the soil based on friction ratio ($f_R$) and the cone tip resistance ($q_c$).

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.45-52
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• 2015

To minimize the cost of maintenance, repair and over-design of track substructure, an accurate evaluation of strength and stiffness of the track substructure is necessary. In this study, a cone penetrometer with impact penetration rod (CPI) is developed for the evaluation of track substructure. For applicability test, the chamber and field tests were performed. As the experimental results of the CPI, dynamic cone penetration endex (DCPI), cone tip resistance ($q_c$), friction resistance ($f_s$) and friction ratio (Fr) were obtained. In the chamber test, the experimental results show reasonable values for the simulated track substructure. In the field test, the CPI clearly detects the interface between the ballast and the subgrade. Also, discontinuous layers are detected in the subgrade. It is expected that the developed CPI may be an effective tool for the evaluation of track substructure by evaluating the ballast layer by dynamic penetration and the subgrade by static penetration of the inner rod.

• Current Research on Agriculture and Life Sciences
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• v.1
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• pp.95-100
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• 1983

A soil hardness meter with strain gages was developed in order to measure the hardness of the soil. Soil hardness tests were conducted at the laboratory based on this measuring system. Also, these results were compard with that from the cone penetrometer which is widely used for this purpose. The following conclusions were drawn from the results. 1. Since the correlation coefficient of calibration curve obtained from the soil hardness meter with strain gages was 0.99876 and that of calibration curve obtained from the cone penetrometer with dial gage was 0.97150, the soil hardness meter with strain gages was more recomendable than that with dial gage for this purpose. 2. Standard deviations of soil hardness for sands and soil of paddy field when the soil hardness meter with strain gages was used were 6.794 and 8.271, respectively and that of soil hardness for sands and soil of paddy field when the cone penetrometer with dial gage was used were 7.490 and 9.169, respectively. Thus, the soil hardness meter with strain gages seemed to have lower measuring error than with dial gage.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.63-72
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• 2015

This paper describes the correlation and relationship between elastic moduli measured by three stiffness measurement methods with different mechanical characteristics to evaluate the compaction characteristics of subgrade soils. The Soil Stiffness Gauge (SSG) with very small strain (${\approx}0.001%$) ranges, static Plate Loading Test (PLT) with mid-level strain (${\approx}0.01{\sim}0.1%$) ranges, and Dynamic Cone Penetrometer (DCP) using penetration resistance were implemented to measure the elastic modulus. To use the elastic modulus measured by different measurement methods with a wide range of strain in practice, it is required to identify the correlation and relationship of measured values in advance. The comparison results of the measured elastic moduli ($E_{SSG}$, $E_{PLT}$, $E_{DCP}$) using the three measurement methods for domestic and overseas subgrade soils under various conditions indicate that the evaluated elastic modulus relies on the types of soils and the level of stress condition. The correlation analysis of the measured elastic moduli except the data of cement treated soils indicates that the static elastic modulus ($E_{PLT}$) is evaluated as about 60 to 80% of the dynamic elastic modulus ($E_{SSG}$). Unusual soils such as cement treated soils are required to be corrected by the stress correction during the correlation analysis with typical soils, because these types of soils are sensitive to the stress condition when measuring the static elastic modulus ($E_{PLT}$) of soils. In addition, when considering the use of DCP data for the evaluation of the elastic modulus ($E_{DCP}$), the measured data of the elastic modulus less than 200 MPa show more reliable correlation.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.55-63
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• 2018

In order to support the load of the train with enough stiffness, a study on an effective method for the characterization of the stiffness of the compacted subgrade is required. In this study, the crosshole-type dynamic cone penetrometer (CDCP) is used for the stiffness characterization of the subgrade along the depth. For the application of the CDCP test, three points of compacted subgrades are selected as the study sites. For the study sites, CDCP test, in-situ density test, and light falling weight deflectometer (LFWD) test are conducted. As the results of CDCP tests, shear wave velocity profiles are obtained by using the travel times and the travel distances of the shear waves along the depth. In addition, maximum shear modulus ($G_{max}$) profiles are estimated by using the density of the subgrades and the shear wave velocity profiles. The averaged maximum shear moduli at each testing point are highly correlated with the dynamic deflection moduli ($E_{vd}$) determined by LFWD tests. Therefore, a reliable stiffness characterization of the subgrade can be conducted by using CDCP tests. In addition, because CDCP characterizes the stiffness of the subgrade along the depth rather than a representative value, CDCP test may be effectively used for the stiffness characterization of the subgrade.