Self-Boring Pressuremeter Tests in Clay

The development of the pressuremeter has been impeded by two main issues evaluation of the effects if disturbance during drilling on the test data, and how to interpret engineering parameters from pressuremeter test data. Disturbance is believed to be the cheif factor responsible for the disparity between pressuremeter-derived soil parameters and those obtained by laboratory methods, while the use of different interpretation procedures complicates comparison of the pressuremeter results with other test data. This paper presents a series of high quality self-boring pressuremeter test data which are analyzed by four existing methods and a new method which is believed to be less subjective and yeild more consistent results. In addition, an attempt is made to evaluate some of the effects of disturbance both with reguard to the interpretation method and drilling effects on the soil. Recommendations are made for standardizing self-boring pressuremeter drilling and test procedures.