Correlation of Cohesion and Friction Angle Based on SPT-N Values: A Comprehensive Review

Abstract

Soil parameters such as physical, chemical, and strength parameters play an important issue to classify the soil. Cohesion and friction angle are an important factor to understand the nature of the soil. Furthermore, standard Penetration Test (SPT) is one of the most common tests in the field and used to determine the strength of soil in the field prior laboratory tests. The variation in the properties of the soil in different regions, give differ values when using the standard methods, formulas, and correlations. In this paper, an overview of the methods and guidelines currently available in the scientific literature for evaluating the strength capacity of the soil, is reported. Further, important practical issues which contribute in the soil strength in different regions based on cohesion and friction angle used SPT are discussed. Moreover, the correlation results from the standard penetration test compared with those from cohesion and friction angle based on samples number and regions. Finally, the paper mentions the famous correlation in this domain and others from the standard code at USA, Jordan, Japan and UK. The compared results using guides from these standards showed big different, which let us to recommend that, these standards are not suitable for soil strength calculations due to different in the soil parameters from region to other.