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Both static and dynamic penetration tests are widely used to conduct soil investigation practice. Particle crushability has been known to greatly affect the responses of penetration tests. On the other hand, the physical property of granular materials – surface roughness – exhibits considerable influence on crushability. The virtual calibration chamber (VCC) technique, based on the Discrete Element Method (DEM), is used to investigate the effect of particle crushability and roughness on both static and dynamic penetration test responses. In static tests particle crushing reduces tip resistance, and roughness enhances this effect as rough particles crush more than smooth ones. The main effects of roughness and crushability on dynamic responses lie in the track of dynamic penetrograms. The analysis confirms a good correlation between an equivalent dynamic resistance and the static tip resistance. This work has been supported by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain through research grant BIA2017-84752-R. The authors acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, through the ‘Severo Ochoa Program for Centers of Excellence in R&D’ (CEX2018-000797-S).

A recently proposed DEM model for materials with rough crushable grains (Zhang et al. 2021; Ciantia et al. 2015; Otsubo et al. 2017) is here employed to examine the effect of contact roughness on the critical state line, a property of granular materials which is a) fundamental for the evaluation of liquefaction risk and liquefied responses and b) easily accessible through DEM simulation (Ciantia et al. 2019).