DISCUSSIONS AND CLOSURES

Discussion of Review of Standard Penetration Test Short Rod Corrections by Chris R. Daniel, John A. Howie, R. Scott Jackson, and Brian Walker
April 2005, Vol. 131, No. 4, pp. 489497.

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DOI: 10.1061/ASCE1090-02412005131:4489

Luciano Dcourt1
1

Luciano Dcourt Engineering Consultores Ltd., Av. Brig. Faria Lima, 01451-001 Sao Paulo, SP Brazil.

The authors are to be commended for bringing up the matter of whether or not to correct the NSPT values for rods shorter than 10.0 m. The standard penetration test SPT International Reference Test Procedure IRTP Dcourt et al. 1988 has been mentioned in this paper; and the discusser, as one of the authors of that document, would like to offer additional information on this matter. First, the document mentioned in the paper was not actually the ofcial SPT International Reference Test Procedure. Rather, it was just a preview of the ofcial document that the Swedish Geotechnical Society published one year later, during the 12th International Conference of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1989. The former document presented an analysis of energy measurements that was based on the pioneer work by Schmertmann and Palacios 1979; and, as mentioned by the authors, used the F2 method. Schmertmann, by the way, was also one of the authors of the IRTP. Nevertheless, within the committee that elaborated the IRTP, no consensus existed about the adequacy of this method

for evaluating the enthru energy of the SPT in any circumstances. Therefore, it was decided to omit that part of the report in the nal and denitive version of the SPT International Reference Test Procedure. In the same year, 1989, the discusser had the opportunity to present a state-of-the-art report on the SPT Dcourt 1989. In that paper, on analyzing the proposed correction factors for rod lengths of less than 10.0 m, the discusser stated, This tendency, however, is against the practical experience of the author. Disregarding sandy soils, for which the ambient pressure is fundamental, and considering for example over-consolidated homogeneous clays, one should expect a decrease in the penetration resistance with depth. But this almost never happens. Clearly, the engineers intuition contrasted with the theory accepted at that time. Dcourt and Quaresma Filho 1991 had previously introduced torque measurements onto the SPT procedure, and that test became known as the SPT-T. Torque measurements T are static, as opposed to NSPT measurements, which are dynamic. Therefore, whether or not the NSPT is affected by the length of the rods, the torque measurements are not affected. Also, the experience with the SPT-T demonstrated that for a given soil, a relationship exists between T and NSPT. This knowledge provided the discusser with the rst experimental evidence that the proposed corrections for rod lengths were wrong. The discusser analyzed many cases of SPT-T carried out in uniform layers of stiff clays Dcourt and Quaresma Filho 1994 and in sands of constant relative density Dcourt 2002 and observed that the so called torque ratio T / NSPT was practically constant with depth Figs. 1 and 2. If the NSPT values decrease with depth, the torque ratio would have to increase with depth rather than be constant or vary randomly, as happened in all the cases. Matsumoto et al. 1992 made criterious measurements in two points of the rods and concluded that the energy transferred to the

Fig. 1. Variation of the torque ratio, T / NSPT, with depth

Fig. 2. Variation of the torque ratio, T / NSPT, with depth

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sampler was independent of the rod lengths. These authors measured not only the energy transferred to the rods but also the penetration of the sampler into the ground during the time. It was demonstrated that the penetration of the sampler into the ground was completed only after about 18 ms. The inuence of the rst wave ended in a much shorter time, typically 4 to 5 ms. These authors proved that the energy of waves, other than the rst one, contributed most signicantly to the penetration of the sampler into the ground. A quite different procedure was followed by Aoki and Cintra 2000. On the basis of the Hamilton principle of conservation of energy, they proved that the energy transfer to the rods decreased a little bit with the increase in their lengths. The discusser had the opportunity to participate in the doctoral thesis of Cavalcante 2002. Using both force and velocity measurements, it was demonstrated that the energy transferred to the rods was independent of their length. Odebrecht 2003, following an original approach, also observed a slight decrease in the energy transfer with the increase in the rod lengths. All this information is now brought by the discusser to support the authors main conclusion that no correction should be applied to the NSPT values for rod lengths shorter than 10.0 m. It is time for the specialty to recognize that the recommended correction factors for short rod lengths, even though they have been proposed by outstanding engineers, are not adequate; and their use should be immediately discontinued.

Discussion of Review of Standard Penetration Test Short Rod Corrections by Chris R. Daniel, John A. Howie, R. Scott Jackson, and Brian Walker
April 2005, Vol. 131, No. 4, pp. 489497.

DOI: 10.1061/ASCE1090-02412005131:4489

Fernando A. B. Danziger, A.M.ASCE1; Bernadete R. Danziger2; and Erinaldo H. Cavalcante3

1

Associate Professor, COPPE and Escola Politcnica, Federal Univ., of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil. E-mail: danziger@ coc.ufrj.br 2 Associate Professor, Rio de Janeiro State Univ., Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil. E-mail: brdanzig@uerj.br 3 Associate Professor, Sergipe Federal Univ., Aracaju, SE, Brazil. E-mail: erinaldo@ufs.br

References
Aoki, N., and Cintra, J. C. A. 2000. The application of energy conservation Hamiltons principle to the determination of energy efciency in SPT tests. Application of stress-wave theory to pilesQuality assurance on land and offshore piling, S. Niyama and J. Beim, eds., Balkema, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 457460. Cavalcante, W. H. 2002. Theoretical and experimental investigation on the SPT. Doctoral thesis, COPPE, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in Portuguese. Dcourt, L. 1989. The standard penetration test: State-of-the-art report. 12th ICSMFE, Vol. 4, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 24052416. Dcourt, L. 2002. SPT; SPT-T Brazilian practice: Advantages, limitations, and critics. ABMS, technical publication in Portuguese. Dcourt, L., Muromachi, T., Nixon, I. K., Schmertmann, J. H., Thorburn, S., and Zolkov, E. 1988. Standard penetration test SPT: International reference test procedure. Proc., 1st Int. Symp. on Penetration Testing, Balkema, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 326. Dcourt, L., and Quaresma Filho, A. R. 1991. The SPT-CF: An improved SPT. SEFE II, Vol. 1, So Paulo, Brazil, 106110. Dcourt, L., and Quaresma Filho, A. R. 1994. Practical applications of the standard penetration test complemented by torque measurements, SPT-T: Present stage and future trends. 8th ICSMFE, Vol. 1, New Delhi, India, 143146. Matsumoto, T., Serigushi, H., Yoshida, H., and Kita, K. 1992. Signicance of two point strain measurement in SPT. Soils Found., 322, 6782. Odebrecht, E. 2003. Energy measurements in the SPT. Doctoral thesis, UFRGS, Porto Alegre, RS., Brazil in Portuguese. Schmertmann, J. H., and Palacios, A. 1979. Energy dynamics of SPT. J. Geotech. Engrg. Div., 1058, 909926.

The electric device developed by the authors might indeed represent a powerful tool to better analyze the contact history of the hammer and anvil during a standard penetration test SPT. The authors collected data from a laboratory study on SPT that revealed the occurrence of secondary impacts before the time at which the hammer and anvil are generally assumed to separate 2L / c. The authors also emphasized that these impacts can be predicted by a proper modeling of SPT. However, they did not provide a clear explanation of the reasons for those impacts. The discussers have made some hypotheses about the causes of those impacts; the rst one is associated with an impedance ratio reduction, since it seems to be related to the transition from the NW anvil rod to the AW rod. However, the distance from the top of the anvil rod to the transition is around 1.7 m, so the elapsed time between the rst impact and the rst disconnection should be 0.7 ms, but the measured value was around 1.3 ms. Other possibilities might be related to the particular shape of the safety

Fig. 1. Force F versus time, theoretical and experimental; safety hammer, AW rods adapted from Schmertmann and Palacios 1979

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Fig. 2. Force and velocity versus time; rod length of 16.39 m; test performed in a sandy clay Cavalcante 2002

Fig. 3. Force-versus-time curve; data from Fig. 2; elapsed time corresponding to the period of separation between hammer and rods was removed

Fig. 4. Energy and displacement versus time; rod length of 16.39 m; test performed in a sandy clay Cavalcante 2002

hammer-anvil-rod system used. In fact, when the compression wave resulting from the rst impact propagates downward in the anvil rod, a compression wave also propagates upward in the upper solid part of the hammer. When this wave reaches the hammer top at the time Lh / c, where Lh = 148 mm is the length of the upper part of the hammer, it reects as a tension wave that combines with and cancels the upward compression wave, giving

the particles a total velocity equal to twice the previous value. At the time 2Lh / c, no strain exists in the hammer Fairhurst 1961; see also Palacios 1977 and Schmertmann and Palacios 1979. If the hammer had a cylindrical shape, the hammer velocity at the interface would abruptly change at 2Lh / c Fairhurst 1961. The continuation of the process would generate a stepped-shape curve, as shown by Fairhurst 1961, Palacios 1977, and Schmertmann

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Fig. 5. Efciency versus length of rods Cavalcante 2002; Cavalcante et al. 2004

and Palacios 1979. However, at the time 2Lh / c, the tension wave starts to propagate also at the sleeve of the hammer. The reected compression wave, associated with the downward tension wave at the sleeve, progresses upward in the sleeve, and is superimposed on the waves traveling in the upper part of the hammer. How this superposition generates a disconnection is not clear, but if the authors could provide an explanation for such unexpected behavior, it should be interesting. Furthermore, although the authors have stated that the force and velocity measured prior to 2L / c decay exponentially only in a very rough sense, this observation seems to be valid only for the particular hammer-anvil-rod system that the authors used. In fact, the data obtained by Palacios 1977 and Schmertmann and Palacios 1979, who also used a safety hammer, did show a force-versus-time curve that could be well represented by a stepped shape or approximated by an exponential decay curve, as shown in Fig. 1. The authors should provide an explanation of the reasons for the differences. An extensive eld research program was undertaken by the discussers Cavalcante 2002; Cavalcante et al. 2004. A total of 1,393 blows have been recorded not considering the blows recorded in the 150 mm initial setting. Different kinds of soil and soil resistance have been found in 12 boreholes where the measured data have been obtained. Most of the instrumented tests have been performed in depths limited to around 16 m. The SPT equipment consisted of a pinweight hammer and 3.23 kg/ m rods, as in Brazilian practice. Although no device similar to the authors device has been used to verify the separation between hammer and anvil, the position of the instrumentation about 0.5 m below the anvil top and the shape of force and velocity-versustime curves allow the discussers to assume that no separation has occurred before 2L / c in all blows recorded. Moreover, the force-versus-time curve in almost all cases could be associated with the exponential decay type as reported by Fairhurst 1961, on the basis of previous work by Timoshenko

and Goodier 1951, who derived the expression to the rigid hammer case; see also Yokel 1982 until the impedance change which corresponds to the top of the sampler 2L / c, where Ldistance from the instrumented section to the sampler top, as illustrated in Fig. 2 for a blow related to a 16.39 m rod length. A second impact can be observed from the gure. If the part of the curve corresponding to the elapsed time where anvil and rod are separated between the rst and second impact is removed, the exponential decay type of curve is even easier to observe Fig. 3. Furthermore, the authors have mentioned that the assumption of Schmertmann and Palacios 1979 that any energy transferred during post 2L / c impacts would not contribute to sampler penetration has never been properly assessed in real soils. The discussers did obtain such data for different kinds of soils Cavalcante 2002; Cavalcante et al. 2004 and found that this assumption is denitely not true. The discussers do agree with the authors that the additional energy is delayed, rather than lost, and does contribute to sampler penetration, as shown in Fig. 4. In all cases where a tension-reected wave has occurred which happened in most of the tests performed, at least a second impact has occurred in a single blow, each one contributing to the energy delivered to the rods. The authors also speculated about the validity of their ndings in real soils, since their research was performed in the laboratory. The discussers experience is that those speculations are generally correct, and their data support them. In fact, the discussers concluded Cavalcante 2002 that the timing of the secondary impacts is affected by the soil stiffness and strength, related by the discussers to the N value, where N is dened as the ratio between 300 mm penetration divided by the sampler nal penetration in mm in that instrumented blow Schmertmann and Palacios 1979. Thus, the length of time between successive impacts decreases with the increase of the N value for a given rod length. Finally, the number of impacts after 2L / c, the elapsed time between successive impacts, and the amount of energy transferred in each impact vary with the N value. As another example, for an N value as low as 1.9 and a very short rod 2.39 m, seven impacts have been measured. The rst impact has contributed only 41% to the maximum energy delivered to the rods. However, the maximum energy or energy efciency from the hammer to the rods does not show any trend of variation with depth, as illustrated in Fig. 5. Data in the gure represent the average of all blows in each SPT. Therefore, the discussers experience, which is based on extensive eld-testing research, supports quite well the point raised by the authors that no short rod correction is needed at all.

References
Cavalcante, E. H. 2002. Theoretical-experimental investigation of SPT. D.Sc. thesis, COPPE, Federal Univ. of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Cavalcante, E. H., Danziger, F. A. B., and Danziger, B. R. 2004. Estimating the SPT penetration resistance from rod penetration based on instrumentation. Proc., Geotechnical and Geophysical Site Characterization, Millpress, The Netherlands, Vol. 1, 293298. Fairhurst, C. 1961. Wave mechanics of percussive drilling. Mine and Quarry Engineering, 273, 122130. Palacios, A. 1977. Theory and measurements of energy transfer during standard penetration test sampling. Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, Fla.

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Schmertmann, J. H., and Palacios, A. 1979. Energy dynamics of SPT. J. Geotech. Engrg. Div., 1058, 909926. Timoshenko, S., and Goodier, J. N. 1951. Theory of elasticity. 2nd Ed., McGraw-Hill. Yokel, F. Y. 1982. Energy transfer in standard penetration test. J. Geotech. Engrg. Div., 1089, 11971202.

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Closure to Review of Standard Penetration Test Short Rod Corrections by Chris R. Daniel, John A. Howie, R. Scott Jackson, and Brian Walker
April 2005, Vol. 131, No. 4, pp. 489497.

without short rod corrections to avoid continued unconservative interpretation of SPT blow counts. Consider the extreme case of a correlation that is based entirely on calibration-chamber data. These data are typically collected by using a single test setup, including a short rod string. If short rod corrections are applied, all blow counts are decreased by the same amount, introducing a bias error in the data. For example, Skempton 1986 proposed the following relationship between N160 and relative density Dr for Reid-Bedford model sand:
2 N160 36 Dr

DOI: 10.1061/ASCE1090-02412005131:4489

Chris R. Daniel1; John A. Howie2; R. Scott Jackson3; and Brian Walker4

1

The relationship is based on calibration-chamber data collected by using rods of 2.4 m 8 ft in length, to which Skempton 1986 applied a rod-length correction of 0.65. Noting that no reduction of energy is likely to have occurred because of rod length, the short rod correction can be removed to reveal the true relationship
2 N160 55 Dr

Doctoral Candidate, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Univ. of British Columbia, 6250 Applied Science La., Vancouver BC, Canada V6T 1Z4. E-mail: daniel@civil.ubc.ca 2 Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Univ. of British Columbia, 6250 Applied Science La., Vancouver BC, Canada V6T 1Z4. E-mail: jahowie@civil.ubc.ca 3 Research Technician, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Univ. of British Columbia, 6250 Applied Science La., Vancouver BC, Canada V6T 1Z4. E-mail: jscottj@@civil.ubc.ca 4 Project Engineer, ADI Limited, 7071 Bayers Rd., Suite 119, Halifax NS, Canada B3L 2C2. E-mail: bwalker@adi.ca

The writers thank the discussers for their interest in the paper and for supporting the suggestion that short rod correction factors should not be applied. The intent of the study was to demonstrate that the logic underlying short rod corrections is awed and that the total transferred energy is insensitive to rod-length variations. The eld data presented in both discussions appear to support this assertion. The writers agree with the discussers that continued use of short rod corrections is undesirable but note that the modication of an accepted standard practice, regardless of its merits, must be preceded by a careful assessment of consequences. This closure addresses this issue and provides additional information on early secondary impacts and stress wave shapes, as requested in the discussion by Danziger et al.

Next, consider the interpretation of an N160 value of 20 recorded in a eld deposit of the same sand using rods that are greater than 10 m long. The interpreted relative density would be 75% if the short rod corrected relationship was used Eq. 1, compared with 60% if the true relationship was used Eq. 2. Most engineers would recognize that the difference of 15% is within the level of accuracy of the relationship, but this example illustrates that seemingly conservative short rod corrections can lead to unconservative correlations. The effect of short rod corrections on empirical correlations that are based on eld data is expected to be less signicant. Some of the data will have been recorded by using rods greater than 10 m in length, and relatively few data points will have been collected by using rod lengths of 4 m or less, to which the largest short rod corrections are applied. If the data are not grouped according to rod length or some indicator of rod length, such as overburden pressure or test depth, the effect of short rod corrections should be relatively random. In that case, the short rod corrections serve only to increase the uncertainty of already uncertain relationships. Overburden correction factors developed by using calibration chamber data are fortunately immune to the effect of short rod corrections. The corrections are based on ratios of blow counts recorded at different conning pressures. The short rod corrections appear in both the numerator and denominator of the ratio and thus cancel, having no net effect on the resulting overburden correction factor.

Discontinued Use of Short Rod Corrections

Standard penetration test SPT N values are corrected for variations of overburden pressure, energy, borehole diameter, rod length, and sampler details to yield N160 values Youd et al. 2001. This long list of corrections creates uncertainty and even confusion for practitioners. Discontinuing the use of unnecessary short rod corrections would help reduce this uncertainty. Short rod corrections have been in use for more than 20 years, however, and empirical SPT correlations developed during that time are likely to be based in part on short rod corrected data. Many practitioners believe that discontinuing the use of short rod corrections would be unconservative for this reason. In fact, one consequence of the invalidity of short rod corrections is that correlations that are based on short rod corrected data are inherently unconservative. Some of these correlations therefore need to be reassessed

Secondary Impacts Prior to 2L / c

The propagation of stress waves through SPT hammer-and-rod systems is highly complex because of the partial reection of stress waves that occurs at every change in cross-sectional area. This leads to exponential growth of the total number of stress waves propagating within the system. The writers are therefore hesitant to ascribe early separations to any one feature of the hammer or rods. FVCALC can be used to demonstrate this complexity by investigating the effect of individual rod components on separation histories. A series of additional FVCALC simulations was completed for the case of the safety hammer and the 6.49 m string of drill rods described in the paper. For the rst simulation, the rod string was

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modeled as a single NW rod of 6.49 m length with no changes in cross-sectional area Fig. 1, solid lines. Simulations were then run with each of the following additions: 1 the NW-AW crossover; 2 a string of four 1.0 m long AW rods and a sampler below the location of the NW-AW crossover; and 3 the anvil. The simulated NW-AW crossover and anvil are indicated by the dashed lines in Fig. 1. The reader is referred to Fig. 1 of the paper for clarication of the hammer and rod geometries. The axial force between the hammer and the top of the rod string FA is monitored during FVCALC simulations. Hammeranvil separation is simulated whenever the passing of a stress wave would cause the force to decrease below zero. The FA histories arising from each of the four previously described simulations are shown in the top four plots of Fig. 2. For a uniform rod, the hammer and anvil remain in contact until time 2L / c, when the stress wave reected from the bottom of the rod arrives at the hammer-anvil interface. The next three plots illustrate how each of the three added components affects the FA history observed during the uniform rod case. Early hammer-anvil separations, indicated by periods of zero FA, are predicted in all cases. The fth plot shows the FA history when all three components of the rod string are included in the simulation. This FA history corresponds to Fig. 2 in the paper. The combined effect of the three individual components leads to a rather complex contact force history, including many more early separations than were caused by any one component. The paper noted that FVCALC simulates perfect stress wave formation and propagation, including perfectly sharp transitions from loaded to unloaded states, whereas true stress waves exhibit nite rise times. The bottom plot in Fig. 2 demonstrates the effect of imposing a user-dened rise time. This modication reduces the number of secondary impacts to the observed number of two. This FA history corresponds to Fig. 3 in the paper. These simulations illustrate that a comprehensive study would be required to determine all the factors contributing to premature hammer-anvil separations. It is anticipated that the wide variety of test equipment in use will make it very difcult to predict all situations for which these impacts occur. The writers reiterate, however, that their occurrence probably has little or no effect on the transferred energy or measured blow count.

Atypical Stress Wave Data

The discussion by Danziger et al. takes issue with our observation that force and velocity histories recorded during SPT follow a pattern of exponential decay only in a very rough sense. The writers believe that the differences between the data presented in the paper and those presented by Danziger et al. can be attributed to differences of scale and instrumentation details. The data presented by the writers span a very short period of time compared with the data presented in the Danziger et al. discussion. Deviations from idealized exponential decay curves become more apparent when data are viewed in greater detail. In addition, the writers experience indicates that instrumentation details can have a signicant effect on the shape of the measured data. For example, it is apparent that the Schmertmann and Palacios 1979 data presented in the Danziger et al. discussion have been heavily ltered, producing a relatively smooth curve. This ltering occurred because a piezoelectric load cell was used to measure force, because of the intentional and unintentional ltering that is applied by all signal processing equipment and because the data were digitized by hand from photographs of an oscilloscope screen. Although this level of ltering would be considered

Fig. 1. Block model of safety hammer and rods solid lines show model used for initial uniform rod simulation; dashed lines are components added during subsequent simulations

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Fig. 2. Histories of FA from FVCALC simulations of several rod congurations periods of zero FA occur when hammer has separated from rods

extreme by current standards, modern proprietary systems continue to employ mechanical lters such as soft accelerometer mounts to protect instruments and low-pass antialiasing lters to limit the amount of data required for each hammer blow. The writers have made a concerted effort to develop equipment capable of recording the highest-quality data Howie et al. 2003. The system that was used is capable of recording the higher-frequency stress wave activity that is predicted during simulations but is often absent from stress wave data because of

ltering. These higher-frequency components generally do not have a signicant effect on the calculated energy but are of considerable interest during a fundamental study such as ours.

Conclusion
Field and laboratory evidence backed by numerical modeling indicate that the logic underlying short rod corrections is awed.

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The evidence indicates that signicant proportions of the applied kinetic energy at impact may be transferred to a short rod string during secondary impacts. The effect of this delayed energy transfer on sampler penetration is unknown but is not considered to justify the short rod corrections currently in use. The writers recommend that the use of short rod correction factors be discontinued. SPT correlations derived by using short rod data may need to be reevaluated, since unconservative errors may be introduced when they are applied to data collected by using rod lengths greater than those represented in the database. This is of particular importance for correlations that are based on calibration chamber data.
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It is of interest to compare these factors to the ratio of the energy transferred during the initial impact cluster to the maximum transferred energy.

References
Howie, J. A., Daniel, C. R., Jackson, R. S., and Walker, B. 2003. Comparison of energy measurement methods in the standard penetration test. Rep. Prepared for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Geotechnical Research Group, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Schmertmann, J. H., and Palacios, A. 1979. Energy dynamics of SPT. J. Geotech. Engrg. Div., 1058, 909926. Skempton, A. W. 1986. Standard penetration test procedures and the effects in sands of overburden pressure, relative density, particle size, aging and overconsolidation. Geotechnique, 363, 425447. Youd, T. L., et al. 2001. Liquefaction resistance of soils: Summary report from the 1996 NCEER and 1998 NCEER/NSF workshops on evaluation of liquefaction resistance of soils. J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng., 12710, 817833.

Erratum
The following correction should be made to the original paper: The third sentence of the second paragraph on page 496 should reads as follows:

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