SPT Overburden Correction (Liao–Whitman)

The standard penetration test counts the hammer blows needed to drive a split-spoon sampler 300 mm, and the same sand gives a higher count deeper down simply because it is confined more tightly. To compare one borehole with another, or with the liquefaction databases, the count must be normalised to a reference overburden of one atmosphere, and Liao and Whitman's 1986 factor $C_N = \sqrt{p_a/\sigma'_v}$ is the form the codes adopted. A field N₆₀ of 20 at an effective overburden of 150 kPa becomes (N₁)₆₀ = 20 × √(100/150) = 20 × 0.816 = 16.3.

The trap is doing this before the energy correction. Raw field N must first be corrected to 60% of the theoretical hammer energy (a safety hammer on a rope-and-cathead is around 60%, an old pinweight hammer nearer 45%, a modern automatic trip hammer 80–90%) plus rod length, borehole diameter and liner corrections. Skipping that and applying $C_N$ to a raw N is the single most common misuse of the SPT. The second trap is shallow depth: at $\sigma'_v$ below about 25 kPa the square root inflates $C_N$ past 1.7, and most standards cap it at about 2. Note too that $\sigma'_v$ is the effective stress, so below the water table you use the buoyant unit weight.