Abstract:In recent years, with the national "the Belt and Road" strategic plan, more and more Chinese enterprises are going abroad and are undertaking the overseas construction projects. The soil classification system of American Standard is widely used internationally. The soil engineering classification methods of USCS, AASHTO and static penetration test under the American Standard System are systematically introduced. The specific contents, mutual relations and application characteristics of each method are expounded. Taking a survey project of a country in South Asia as an example, the situation and some problems in the engineering application are briefly described. It is pointed out that USCS under the American Standard System is a concise method applied in the soil classification of the projects. Compared with the Chinese standard, there are some differences in the particle size division of coarse-grained soil, the plasticity diagram of fine-grained soil and the soil engineering test method. AASHTO soil classification is often used in soil aggregate in highway construction, but it is seldom used in survey work, and there is no direct corresponding relationship between AASHTO and USCS soil classification. It is an indirect method to divide and classify the soil layers by the static penetration test in essence. It can be directly used in areas with regional geological data and rich engineering experience. But in the areas with lack of data and experience, it needs to be combined with the drilling data for verification. The study contents can be referred for the overseas engineering survey based on American Standard.
