Abstract: Based on the consolidation data of deep fine-grained soils distributed along the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, a simplified method is proposed for determining the compression modulus of the undisturbed normally consolidated foundation soils using standard compression modulus E1?2 and liquid limit wL, in which the composite function expression containing the segmental function of the e-lgp curve and the linear relationship between liquid limit and compression index are also adopted. It is shown that the Harris function can describe the e-lgp curve characters well, and E1?2 can reflect the secant slope of the low-pressure section of the compression curve, while wL can reflect the tangent one of the high pressure section. The compression modulus estimation method of foundation soil yields good results for all levels of pressure, namely, the average error is just 7.89% in the commonly used pressure section of 100-1 000 kPa, and in the high pressure section is about 13.70%, whereas significant error occurs only in the low pressure section. The study results provide a new approach to rapidly obtain the compression modulus of soil in the case that the e-lgp curve is lacking.

Key words: compression modulus, normal consolidation of intact soil, liquid limit, e-lgp curve, Harris function