REVIEW ON PENETRATION MECHANISM AND APPLICATION OF BALL PENETROMETER IN OFFSHORE ENGINEERING

In recent years, with the development of global marine strategies, engineering construction and experimental studies have been increasingly carried out in both offshore and onshore. In order to evaluate the soil properties on the seabed, the cone penetration test(CPT)technology has become much more important in the domestic and international marine engineering. This paper summarizes the development of marine cone penetration test according to extensive literatures domestic and oversea. Besides, the relevant research contents of the ball penetrometer are summarized. The ball penetrometer is now used oversea for offshore site characterization in soft sediments as an alternative or supplement to conventional CPT tests. The analytical results show that the ball penetrometer is superior to the cone in quantifying the strength of soft clay, as well as evaluating the remoulded strength and the effect of penetration velocity by means of cyclic remoulding tests and variable rate penetrometer tests. Based on the full-flow mechanism, it is worthwhile to compare the in situ testing data between ball penetrometer and CPT.Furthermore given the nature of soft soil at seabed, this paper introduces a stoppable piezoprobe at shallow depths for offshore engineering.