CORRELATION OF ELECTRICAL RESISTIVITY WITH SELECTED SOIL PARAMETERS WITH VARIATION IN MINEROLOGY, ORGANIC CONTENTS AND TEMPERATURE

In general, soil investigation (SI) incorporating bore hole sampling perhaps
produces the most reliable value of relevant soil parameters for the purpose of
actual calculation on factor of safety in slopes. However, bore hole sampling is
in general time consuming and very expensive. The long term objective of this
whole research is to implement a quick method of assessing the factor of safety
(FOS) in slopes by replacing the conventional soil parameters such as cohesion
and internal angle of friction with electrical parameters such as resistivity. This
paper however is limited to the investigation of correlation between electrical
resistivity with some soil properties. Field electrical resistivity surveys using
basic multimeter were conducted on a slope in UTP and the result obtained were
compared and correlated with some soil properties obtained from sand box test
done in the geotechnical laboratory. Result from the experiment of electrical
resistivity with different parameters indicated that soil resistivity reduced as the
temperature increase, soil resistivity increased as the percentage of organic
carbon increased and soil resistivity increased as the mineralogy density
increased.