The Applicability of Regression Analysis and Artificial Neural Networks to the Prediction Process of Consistency and Compaction Properties of High Plastic Clays

Abstract

In all kinds of site investigation reports prepared to acquire the current situation of the project site, it is a common fact to perform the consistency tests which are specialized as Atterberg limit tests. Consistency can be defined as an important term, especially for fine-grained soils, to appoint the current state of the water content of soil formation in the field. Based on the ease and cost-effectiveness of the Atterberg tests, it has become a traditional solution to determine the fundamental design properties such as the rigidity and strength of the soil formation with the use of empirical approaches that are developed according to them. In this context, “compaction” can be an interesting term to investigate the appropriateness of determination of special characteristics of the phenomenon such as the optimum water content and the maximum dry unit weight with the development of a new perspective based on a simplest experimental process formed with only the evaluation of water content. Because it is a complicated and time-consuming process to apply the compaction test beginning of the sample preparation step to the ultimate evaluation step. Hence, in this paper, an integrated study is performed for highly plastic clays to acquire the consistency and the compaction properties together with a direct relationship. A huge database was prepared according to the data’s given in the well-accepted literature sources by the transmission of liquid limit and plastic limit test results conducted for only the high plastic clays. Besides, simple equations are tried to be obtained to calculate the plasticity index and approximations are proposed to find the maximum dry unit weight and the optimum water content of the soil, respectively. As a result, the applicability of both the regression analysis and the artificial neural network studies to the attainment process of both consistency characteristics and compaction problem were compared with each other to procure a reliable determination process. © 2021, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.