An automated cloud-based system for in-situ geotechnical site characterization using cone penetration test (CPT/CPTu)
摘要
The Cone Penetration Test (CPT) is one of the most reliable and efficient methods for in situ site characterization, assessing ground improvement, and evaluating the potential for liquefaction. Despite CPT’s primary limitation being its inability to retrieve physical soil samples, its real-time data continuous geo-data presents a unique opportunity. With that in mind, manual interpretation of CPT data for soil behavior type (SBTn) classification can be time-consuming and subjective. The lack of physical samples makes instantaneous soil behavior type (SBTn) classification at the site even more critical. To address these gaps, this study develops and rigorously evaluates two automation methods: (i) a cloud‑based computational framework (MapCPT) that automates the Robertson‑based normalization and SBT‑chart workflow to deliver auditable SBTn profiles and 2D sections at the site location of acquisition; and (ii) supervised machine learning (ML) models (ANN, SVM, RF) trained to predict SBTn directly from raw CPT/CPTu inputs. Two high‑quality datasets were used: 100 CPTs (37,821 points) from multiple U.S. sites and 20 CPTu soundings (13,205 points) from a single site, for development, testing, and validation. The comparative analysis and validation revealed that MapCPT successfully reproduced manual calculations for qt, Rf, σv0,