A soft ground condition exists whenever construction loads a cohesive foundation soil beyond its preconsolidation stress, as often occurs with saturated clays and silts having SPT blow counts that are near zero. The paper recommends testing programs, testing methods and data interpretation techniques for developing design parameters for settlement and stability analyses. It hopes to move the state-of-practice closer to the state-of-the-art and thus is intended for geotechnical practitioners and teachers rather than researchers. Components of site characterization covered include site stratigraphy. | Recommended Practice for Soft Ground Site Characterization Arthur Casagrande Lecture Práctica Recomendada para la Caracterización de Sitios en Terreno Blando Conferencia Arthur Casagrande by Charles C. Ladd Hon. M. ASCE Edmund K. Turner Professor Emeritus Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge MA USA ccladd@ and Don J. DeGroot M. ASCE Associate Professor Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of Massachusetts Amherst Amherst MA USA degroot@ prepared for 12th Panamerican Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge MA USA June 22 - 25 2003 April 10 2003 Revised May 9 2004 Table of Contents List of List of 1. 2. GENERAL 3. SOIL STRATIGRAPHY SOIL CLASSIFICATION AND GROUND WATER 4. UNDISTURBED SAMPLING SAMPLE Sources of Disturbance and Procedures to Assessing Sample 5. IN SITU Field Vane Piezocone Principal 6. LABORATORY CONSOLIDATION TESTING. 23 Compression Flow Principal 7. UNDRAINED SHEAR BEHAVIOR AND STABILITY Review of Behavioral Problems with Conventional UUC and CIUC Strength Testing for Undrained Stability Three Dimensional End Principal 8. LABORATORY CONSOLIDATED-UNDRAINED SHEAR Experimental Capabilities and Testing Reconsolidation Interpretation of Strength Principal 9. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS . 51 10. ii List of Tables Table Clay Properties for Soft Ground Table Pros and Cons of In Situ vs. .
