ACTA GEOTECHNICA SLOVENICA, cilt.10, sa.2, ss.28-41, 2013 (SCI-Expanded)
The determination of the compaction parameters of soils, the maximum dry unit weight (gamma(dmax)) and the optimum water content (w(opt)), at various compaction energy (E) levels is an important process. The aim of this study is to develop correlations in order to estimate the compaction parameters dependent on the compaction energy for coarse-grained soils with various fines contents on which limited studies exist in the literature. Genetic Expression Programming (GEP) and Multi Linear Regression (MLR) analyses are used in the derivation of the correlations for the prediction of gamma(dmax) and w(opt) obtained from Standard Proctor (SP) and Modified Proctor (MP) tests with the index properties of coarse-grained soils with various fines contents. To develop the models, a total of 86 data sets collected from university laboratories in Turkey and six parameters, such as gravel content (G %), sand content (S %), fines content (FC %), liquid limit (w(L) %) and plasticity index (I-P %) of fines content and compaction energy (E Joule), are used. The performance of the models is comprehensively examined using several statistical verification tools. The results revealed that the GEP and MLR models are fairly promising approaches for the prediction of the maximum dry unit weight and the optimum water content of cohesionless soils with various fines contents at SP and MP compaction energy levels. The proposed correlations are reasonable ways to estimate the compaction parameters for the preliminary design of a project where there are financial and time limitations.