Correlations between physical properties and compression index of fine-grained soils based on a large dataset

A comprehensive statistical analysis of the correlations between the physical properties and compression index Cc of fine-grained soils, based on a large dataset from the soil testing results of a railway project in the eastern coastal area of Malaysia, is presented in this paper. More than 1000 soil samples covering a wide range of soil types, with physical properties, such as natural water content, initial void ratio, dry density, liquid limit, plasticity index, and mechanical property-compression index, were analyzed using linear and nonlinear regressions. A very high correlation was observed between the natural moisture content, initial void ratio, dry density, and compression index. A strong correlation was found between the plasticity, liquid, and compression indices. Lower and upper boundaries, confining most of the previous correlations, were found between the natural water content and compression index. A comparison of all the correlations showed the natural water content and initial void ratio as the two best properties for predicting the compression index of fine-grained soils.