This paper highlights the effect of silt content on cone tip resistance in loose silty sand. In this study, twenty-seven cone penetration tests are performed in saturated silty sand samples with several different silt contents ranging from 10 to 50 percent. The samples are consolidated at three overburden stresses including 100, 200 and 300 kPa. It is shown that, as the silt content increases, the cone tip resistance decreases. In high percent of silt (30-50%), the cone tip resistance decreases more gently compared with low percent of silt (0-30%). It is also concluded that the method proposed by Olsen (1997) for stress normalization of cone tip resistance compared with the Robertson and Wride (1998) method has better agreement with the obtained results. To evaluate liquefaction potential of loose silty sand, the method presented by Robertson and Wride (1998) is also studied. The results showed that the use of Robertson and Wride (1998) method to estimate the fine content from CPT data causes some uncertainty especially for high silt content (FC>30%).

Keywords: Cone tip resistance, Silty sand, Stress normalization, Liquefaction

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