Proposition of correlations for the dynamic parameters of carbonate sands

Abstract

The offshore industry has been challenged with the necessity to build structures with foundations on carbonate soils, found in extensive areas of the tropical and intertropical zones of the planet. As a better understanding of the behavior of these soils becomes more and more indispensable, this paper presents equations to predict the dynamic behavior of carbonate sands, in which two expressions (G/G_max versus γ and D versus γ) were obtained via multiple linear regression using data from resonant column tests carried out on carbonate sands from Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico (Cataño & Pando, 2010). The proposed equations agreed well with experimental data. The error for the expressions G/G_max versus γ was less than 10%, while the expressions D versus γ trended to underestimate the values for the loose condition (D_r = 24%), presenting an effective confining stress of 50kPa. Furthermore, the proposed equations were compared with predictions exhibited by Javdanian & Jafarian (2018) of G/G_max versus γ and D versus γ for carbonate sands, also yielding fairly concordant results.

Keywords
Carbonate sands; Soil dynamic parameters; Shear strain modulus; Damping ratio; Multiple linear regression