Characterizing the in-situ state is essential for evaluating the vulnerability of soils to failure. The cone penetration test (CPT) is an effective in-situ test that enables economical, repeatable, and continuous soil characterization. Most human-made soils involved in the failure of waste storage facilities, like coal combustion products and mine tailings, are silty and thus may experience partial drainage during CPT soundings at standard penetration rates. However, the current state of practice still predominantly adopts the assumption of fully drained or undrained conditions, which may lead to biased soil state interpretation. This study aims to develop a new CPT-based characterization framework for intermediate silty soils using cone tip resistance values to determine the soil state. To do this, CPT soundings were performed in centrifuge model deposits of a coal combustion product with different initial densities. In-flight CPTs were performed at varying penetration velocities in each model, spanning from drained to undrained conditions. Variations in the interpreted soil behavior type index using CPTs under different drainage conditions emphasize the possible errors in soil characterization if partial drainage conditions are not properly accounted for. A correlation between the deposit initial state parameter and the ratio between the normalized drained and undrained tip resistances, Qt,drained/Qt,undrained, is defined, where high Qt,drained/Qt,undrained values are indicative contractive soil due to the generation of positive excess pore pressures. The proposed framework that uses Qt,drained/Qt,undrained to identify contractive layers is expected to help practitioners assess the vulnerability of soil layers to experience liquefaction failure.