Assessment of fractal behavior of soils

Abstract

For some time it has been recognized, from both random field theory and geostatistics, that soils and rock may exhibit different spatial variability characteristics depending on the scale of the investigation and the type of problem being examined. Recently, it has been proposed that this behavior may be due to soils and rocks having a fractal (self-similar) nature at many scales. This paper examines a large number of cone penetration test soundings, performed in a variety of soil types, in order to assess whether fractal behavior can be readily identified. The examination, whilst one-dimensional, is performed both in the vertical and horizontal directions. The analyses demonstrate that fractal behavior is present, but is unlikely to be a typical feature of all CPT data. In addition, the paper briefly discusses trends in spatial variability modeling.