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/Gmax 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/Gmax versus γ was less than 10%, while the expressions D versus γ trended to underestimate the values for the loose condition (Dr = 24%), presenting an effective confining stress of 50 kPa. Furthermore, the proposed equations were compared with predictions exhibited by Javdanian & Jafarian (2018) of G/Gmax versus γ and D versus γ for carbonate sands, also yielding fairly concordant results.