Soil properties determination for some applications requires quick, easy and cheap method rather than using the traditional sophisticated, time consuming and expensive laboratory test methods. The use of non-disturbing test method is very much recommended to have more reliable test results. Recently, there has been a great demand towards using special techniques and apparatuses for measuring the soil properties in-situ which facilitate having more tests and covering larger area in shorter time. The electrical geophysical method is one of these techniques which allow rapid measure for soil electrical properties such as electrical resistivity, electrical conductivity and potential directly from soil surface to any depth without soil disturbance. In this research, laboratory tests were carried out on calcareous soil samples for determining their electrical resistivity after compaction. Samples were extracted from the soil formation in Ain Helwan inside Helwan University campus. Soil formation in Ain Helwan is different than the usual Nile formation in Cairo or the desert formation near to Helwan area, as it has calcareous nature. Results between electrical resistivity and compaction index were plotted and relationships were developed for soil in this site between electrical resistivity and different soil properties, water content and compaction index. The effect of fine contents on results was also discussed. Based on the obtained results it was found that the change in water content and fines content are reflected on the obtained electrical resistivity and accordingly an in-situ compaction control can be carried out by applying the electrical resistivity approach. Ó 2017 Housing and Building National Research Center. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

The simplicity and low cost of the standard penetration test (SPT) have always been the major advantages of this test over other field tests. Despite that other field tests (e.g. PMT, CPT, DMT, . . .) are supposed to provide more reliable results, yet they are still costly and not feasible in every project. Considering that SPT is available in all site investigation programs for all sizes of project, it was tempting to provide correlations between SPT results and other field test results. Through these correlations it will be feasible to estimate the soil parameters and deformation properties from the SPT number of blows. However, it is believed that correlations will differ, if the tested soil is calcareous. Furthermore, adopting local correlations is more favorable as it caters for the geological formation of the site. In this research it is aimed to obtain correlation between the PMT results and the SPT results for calcareous soil. A site investigation comprising boreholes with SPT and PMT was carried out near to the Red sea coast in Jeddah. The study was carried out to develop a local correlation between the results of SPT and PMT considering the effects of soil gradation and carbonate content. Comparison between the obtained correlation and other available correlations is also considered.

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