COMPARISON OF THE VERIS PROFILER 3000 TO AN ASAE-STANDARD PENETROMETER

Cone penetrometers, as standardized by ASAE, have been used for many years as the primary instrument for investigating and quantifying soil compaction. Recently, non-standard penetrometers have become commercially available. These instruments depart from the standard so they can simultaneously sense additional soil parameters [e.g., soil electrical conductivity (EC)] in addition to cone index (CI). In this research we compared CI data collected with the Veris Profiler 3000 EC-sensing penetrometer to CI data collected with ASAE-standard large cone and small cone penetrometers. The Profiler operated at a faster insertion speed and exhibited a non-standard cone geometry. Cone geometry had a significant effect when comparing this penetrometer to standard large and small cones. There was also a significant effect of cone size between the two standard cones. It was possible to develop CI-dependent equations relating data collected with one tip to data from another tip, but a large amount of scatter was present in the relationship. No significant effect of insertion speed was detected among the ASAE-standard insertion speed of 30 mm/s (1.2 in./s) and two higher speeds, 40 and 50 mm/s (1.6 and 2.0 in./s). The amount of scatter present in replicate CI data was inversely related to cone diameter, indicating that fewer measurements would be required to obtain a given level of precision with a larger cone.