Liquid limit of selected postglacial soils from west-central Poland

The aim of this paper is to establish a correlation between the liquid limit value obtained in the Casagrande apparatus (wL/cup) and in the cone penetrometer (wL/cone) for typical glacial sediments from west-central Poland and compare them with the correlation equations published in the literature. The following correlation was formulated: wL/cone = 0.91wL/cup+ 1.98. The analysis presented in this paper proves that deriving a generalized and universal relationship wL/cup/wL/cone for all cohesive soils, regardless of their origin, is very challenging and may not be reliable for use in the engineering practice. It is verified that, in the range of low values of liquid limit, the cone penetrometer gives higher values of wL than those obtained from the Casagrande apparatus. However, for the Polish postglacial soils analysed in this paper, the cone penetrometer underestimates the results in relation to the Casagrande apparatus above wL = 22%. For the purpose of this study, wL = 22% was defined as “the point of equivalent results” (wL/cone = wL/cup).