Cavity expansion and penetration resistance in sand

A theory, based on cavity expansion and stress rotation analyses, is developed for computing the cone penetration resistance of sand. The sand is modeled as a nonlinear elastic-plastic material. The theory can be used for analysis of calibration chamber tests, as it takes full account of chamber size and boundary conditions. The theory was used to calculate values of cone penetration resistance for the conditions corresponding to each of about 400 cone penetration tests performed in different calibration chambers. The chamber diameters range from 0.76 to 1.20 m and the cone penetrometer diameters from 1 to 3.57 cm. The samples were prepared of different sands at different densities and stresses. The agreement between theoretical and experimental values was better than +/-30% in most cases.