Foundations

Front 1

Most of the soils that cover the earth are formed by weathering of rocks. Therer are 2 general types of weathering: mechanical and chemical.

Back 1

True

Front 2

Residual soil deposits are common in the southeastern US.

Back 2

True

Front 3

One disadvantage of cone penetration testing is the fact that no soil samples are recovered for classification purposes.

Back 3

True

Front 4

Friction ratio is useful for estimating soil type. A friction ratio of less than 2% usually indicates a clayey soil.

Back 4

False

Front 5

A standard split-barrel sampler used for standard penetration testing has a small enough area ratio to allow for the collection of "undisturbed" soil samples.

Back 5

False

Front 6

Standard penetration testing results in Nf values. Nf is the number of hammer blows to drive a split-barrel sampler through 12" of soil.

Back 6

False

Front 7

Nf (or simply N) values are also called standard penetration numbers.

Back 7

True

Front 8

Standard penetration testing cannot be conducted in collapsing soils.

Back 8

True

Front 9

Scraper bucket samples are sometimes referred to as shelby tubes.

Back 9

False

Front 10

Vane shear testing may be used to determine the in situ undrained shear strength of clays-particularly soft clays

Back 10

True

Front 11

In clay soils, effective overburden corrections for Nf values are not used.

Back 11

True

Front 12

An alluvial soil is transported soil deposited by wind action

Back 12

False

Front 13

Aeolian soil deposits derive from the action of streams and rivers.

Back 13

False

Front 14

A moraine is a glacial landform

Back 14

True

Front 15

Loess is a wind-deposited material consisting primarily of silt and silt-sized particles.

Back 15

True

Front 16

Saprolite is a highly plastic, clayey soil.

Back 16

False

Front 17

Loam is a mixture of soil grains of various sizes, such as clay, silt, and sand.

Back 17

True

Front 18

The natural moisture content of organic soils may exceed 200% or more

Back 18

True

Front 19

A piston sampler can provide very high quality "undisturbed" samples of clayey soils.

Back 19

True

Front 20

The most common method for advancing a bore hole in the US is to use a power-driven, hollow stem, helical, continuous-flight auger.

Back 20

True

Front 21

Seimic refraction surveys utilize shear wave velocity measurements to estimate the thickness of soil layers or depth to hard soil or rock.

Back 21

False, P wave

Front 22

Cross-hole seismic surverys utilize compression wave velocity measurements to estimate valuse of shear and Young's modulus.

Back 22

False, shear wave

Front 23

Electrical resistivity surveys utilize electrical resistance measurements to estimate subsurface soil conditions (soil type and layer thickness)

Back 23

True

Front 24

A saturated clay will probably have a higher electrical resistivity than sound rock.

Back 24

False

Front 25

The pressuremeter test utilizes volume and pressure measurements for an expanding cell pressing against surrounding soil to estimate in situ soil modulus.

Back 25

True

Front 26

According to Das, soil exploration costs should be 1-5% of the cost of the structure.

Back 26

False

Front 27

According to Das, continuous-flight augers are probably the most common method used for advancing a borehole.

Back 27

True

Front 28

The standard driving energy for advancing the split-spoon sampler when performing a SPT is provided by a 140-pound hammer falling through 1 foot.

Back 28

False

Front 29

According to Das, when performing a SPT, split-spoon samples are generally taken at about 5 ft depth intervals.

Back 29

True

Front 30

For granular soils, the value of SPT "N" is affected by the effective overburden pressure at the depth of the split-spoon sampler.

Back 30

True

Front 31

Scraper bucket samplers are generally used in cohesive soils.

Back 31

False

Front 32

Vane shear testing involves high-speed rotation of either rectangular or tapered vanes that have been inserted into clayey soils.

Back 32

Fale

Front 33

The static cone penetration test (CPT) was originally known as the French cone penetration test.

Back 33

False

Front 34

The CPT does not produce useful data in clayey soils because of the development of excess pore water pressure at the tip of the cone.

Back 34

False

Front 35

The flat-plate dilatometer test (DMT) is an in situ test that is conducted in a borehole. The test involves measuring the strength and deformability of the soil by expanding a measuring cell withe either liquid or gas.

Back 35

False

Front 36

An impact on the ground surface creates three types of stress waves: P waves (or plane or compression waves), S waves (or shear waves), and R waves (or Rayleigh waves-note:R waves are not mentioned in DAS). S waves travel faster than P waves.

Back 36

False

Front 37

Seismic refraction surveys are based on the travel time(or wave speed) of shear waves (S waves).

Back 37

False

Front 38

Resistivity surveys measure the electrical resistivity of soil (or rock) layers. A dense rock material can be expected to have a lower resistivity thana soft saturated clay.

Back 38

False

Front 39

Loess is an example of a glacial soil deposit

Back 39

False

Front 40

An aeolian soil is deposited by the wind

Back 40

True

Front 41

Marine clays with flocculent structures are rarely sensitive (that is, they usually have sensitivity ratios of 1.0 or close to 1.0)

Back 41

False

Front 42

Varved clay deposits are actually layers of silt and clay

Back 42

True