Data collection for quality assessment

Soil investigations for the quality assessment of a potential borrow area include for instance drilling of boreholes, vibrocoring, and in-situ tests like Standard Penetration Tests and/or Cone Penetration Tests. The extent of the investigation depends on the spatial variability of the soil properties (see also section 3.4.2.1). 

For granular fill material laboratory tests on samples retrieved from the boreholes include amongst others  

When defining the laboratory test program, it must be taken into account that samples have to be reconstituted in order to represent the density of the fill material after dredging, transport, deposition and possibly also ground improvement. Uncertainties in this respect may require further sensitivity analyses. 

Note that typical properties of some fill materials may affect the results of the laboratory tests. For instance, determination of the moisture-density relationship of carbonate sands could induce crushing of the particles which will change the particle size distribution of the sample. The resulting maximum dry density will therefore not be representative for the fill mass. Likewise for carbonate soils, gradings before and after compaction may also change because of the same crushing effect caused by compaction. 

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