Cone Penetration Test is a field investigation technique to characterize soils. However, most of the correlations have been developed for dry or saturated soils. Unsaturated soils are mostly available above the water table where suction stresses can influence the cone resistance. Thus, ignoring the partial saturation could result in inaccurate estimation of mechanical properties from the cone resistance. In this paper, cone penetration is simulated inside soil layers with various ground water levels using Finite Element Method. Mohr-Coulomb constitutive model is modified for unsaturated soils. Material parameters are updated according to the stress state and suction profile in depth using user-material subroutines. Lowering the water table increases the cone resistance above the water table due to the presence of suction stresses that contribute to the effective stresses in the soil. However, this difference diminishes passing the water table where suction goes to zero and effective stress decreases in saturated soil.
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