【正文】 DESIGN AND EXECUTION OF GROUND INVESTIGATION FOR EARTHWORKS PAUL QUIGLEY, FGS Irish Geotechnical Services Ltd ABSTRACT The design and execution of ground investigation works for earthwork projects has bee increasingly important as the availability of suitable disposal areas bees limited and costs of importing engineering fill increase. An outline of ground investigation methods which can augment ?traditional investigation methods? particularly for glacial till / boulder clay soils is presented. The issue of ?geotechnical certification? is raised and remendations outlined on its merits for incorporation with ground investigations and earthworks. 1. INTRODUCTION The investigation and reuse evaluation of many Irish boulder clay soils presents difficulties for both the geotechnical engineer and the road design engineer. These glacial till or boulder clay soils are mainly of low plasticity and have particle sizes ranging from clay to boulders. Most of our boulder clay soils contain varying proportions of sand, gravel, cobbles and boulders in a clay or silt matrix. The amount of fines governs their behaviour and the silt content makes it very weather susceptible. Moisture contents can be highly variable ranging from as low as 7% for the hard grey black Dublin boulder clay up to 2025% for Midland, SouthWest and NorthWest light grey boulder clay deposits. The ability of boulder clay soils to takein free water is well established and poor planning of earthworks often amplifies this. The fine soil constituents are generally sensitive to small increases in moisture content which often lead to loss in strength and render the soils unsuitable for reuse as engineering fill. Many of our boulder clay soils (especially those with intermediate type silts and fine sand matrix) have been rejected at the selection stage, but good planning shows that they can in fact fulfil specification requirements in terms of paction and strength. The selection process should aim to maximise the use of locally available soils and with careful evaluation it is possible to use or incorporate ?poor or marginal soils? within fill areas and embankments. Fill material needs to be placed at a moisture content such that it is neither too wet to be stable and trafficable or too dry to be properly pacted. High moisture content / low strength boulder clay soils can be suitable for use as fill in low height embankments (. 2 to ) but not suitable for trafficking by earthwork plant without using a geotextile separator and granular fill capping layer. Hence, it is vital that the earthworks contractor fully understands the handling properties of the soils, as for many projects this is effectively governed by the trafficability of earthmoving equipment. 2. TRADITIONAL GROUND INVESTIGATION METHODS For road projects, a principal aim of the ground investigation is to classify the suitability of the soils in accordance with Table from Series 600 of the NRA Specification for Road Works (SRW), March 2020. The majority of current ground investigations for road works includes a bination of the following to give the required geotechnical data: ? Trial pits ? Cable percussion boreholes ? Dynamic probing ? Rotary core drilling ? Insitu testing (SPT, variable head permeability tests, geophysical etc.) ? Laboratory testing The importance of ?phasing? the fieldwork operations cannot be overstressed, particularly when assessing soil suitability from deep cut areas. Cable percussion boreholes are normally sunk to a desired depth or ?refusal? with disturbed and undisturbed samples recovered at intervals or change of strata. In many instances, cable percussion boring is unable to perate through very stiff, hard boulder clay soils due to cobble, boulder obstructions. Sample disturbance in boreholes should be prevented and loss of fines is mon, invariably this leads to inaccurate classification. Trial pits are considered more appropriate for recovering appropriate size samples and for observing the proportion of clasts to matrix and sizes of cobbles, boulders. Detailed and accurate field descriptions are therefore vital for cut areas and trial pits provide an opportunity to examine the soils on a larger scale than boreholes. Trial pits also provide an insight on trench stability and to observe water ingress and its effects. A suitably experienced geotechnical engineer or engineering geologist should supervise the trial pitting works and recovery of samples. The characteristics of the soils during trial pit excavation should be closely observed as this provides information on soil sensitivity, especially if water from granular zones migrates into the fine matrix material. Very often, the condition of soil on the sides of an excavation provides a more accurate assessment of its insitu condition. 3. SOIL CLASSIFICATION Soil description and classification should be undertaken in accordance with BS 5930 (1999) and tested in accordance with BS 1377 (1990). The engineering description of a soil is based on its particle size grading, supplemented by plasticity for fine soils. For many of our glacial till, boulder clay soils (. ?mixed soils?) difficulties arise with descriptions and assessing engineering performance tests. As outlined previously, Irish boulder clays usually prise highly variable proportions of sands, gravels and cobbles in a silt or clay matrix. Low plasticity soils with fines contents of around 10 to 15% often present the most difficulties. BS 5930 (1999) now recognises these difficulties in describing ?mixed soils? – the fine soil constituents which