A CT-based approach to assess sample quality in soft soils
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The paper discusses the performance of a novel CT-based tool [1] developed to evaluate sample quality in soft soils. This new technique is applied to two natural soft soil deposits. First, the estuarine deposits encountered at the National soft soil Field Testing Facility (NFTF) in Ballina, NSW (Australia), mainly composed by silty clays of very-high to extremely-high plasticity. Second, the low-plasticity Mediterranean deltaic deposits found in the region of Castello d’Empuries at the Costa Brava, in Catalonia (Spain). Tube specimens of variable diameters retrieved using open samplers (Shelby’s) as well as Osterberg-type fixed-piston samplers were scanned in this study. A statistical analysis of the CT images allows a quantitative assessment of sample quality. The comparison against estimations of the well-established sample quality index, e/e0, indicates a good performance of the proposed method to evaluate sample disturbance for the two natural soft soil deposits studied in the paper. Suggestions for the application of this methodology to other soft soil deposits are also given.