Evaluating Mechanical Properties of Lightweight Cellular Concrete Backfill with Dynamic Cone Penetration Tests

Dynamic cone penetrometer (DCP) has been commonly used for the evaluation and quality control/assurance of soils before, during, and after construction in civil engineering projects. This test equipment has been increasingly used for geotechnical engineering applications but not yet been used to evaluate lightweight cellular concrete (LCC) as a backfill material. This technical note reports laboratory and field DCP tests to evaluate the properties of LCC. To establish the relationship between DCP data and other material properties, unconfined compressive strength and California bearing ratio (CBR) tests were conducted on this material. The test results showed that the measured unconfined compressive strength and CBR of LCC increased as its density increased. The DCP indices (DCPI) for the LCC specimens at different densities were almost constant with the penetration depth. This technical note proposes the correlations between the DCPI and the unconfined compressive strength and CBR, which may be used for future applications.