Development of Correlations for Compression Index

Compression index is one of the most important properties of soils widely used for estimation of settlement during design of foundations.In particular, for routine test requirements, limited laboratory facilities and preliminary evaluations, various equations are available in the literature to simply estimate the compression index using some soil index properties.However, applicability of these equations is often limited for the interested site due to their establishment from different databases.Thus, it is more realistic way to employ the correlations developed using local data of region, provided that data is available.In this viewpoint, this paper aims to develop correlations for the compression index dependent upon the soil index parameters of natural moisture content, liquid limit and initial void ratio for fine-grained soil of Baghdad city.From the developed correlations, it is obtained that the best estimations of compression index is correlated by liquid limit as single variable, and by liquid limit and initial void ratio as double variable.It is clear that use of the developed correlations is more suitable specifically for Baghdad region for preliminary evaluations of foundation settlement.