Empirical Correlation for Estimating Shear-Wave Velocity from Cone Penetration Test Data for Banks Peninsula Loess Soils in Canterbury, New Zealand

Seismic piezocone data obtained from Banks Peninsula loess soil sites in the Port Hills south of Christchurch, New Zealand, are used with multiple linear regression to develop a new Banks Peninsula loess-specific CPT-Vs correlation for predicting shear wave velocity (Vs) from cone penetration test (CPT) measurements. The need for this new correlation is demonstrated through comparisons with existing CPT-Vs models, including a recently developed Christchurch-specific general soils model, with the loess Vs measurements. It is shown that the existing general soil CPT-Vs models tend to systematically underpredict the loess Vs, and it is demonstrated that this underprediction is due to fundamental differences in how the properties of loess and general soil types affect both CPT measurements and shear-wave velocity, and that aging effects alone cannot account for the observed differences.