Large-strain rheological consolidation analysis of multi-layered marine soft clays exhibiting natural structural characteristics

Abstract

The destruction of marine soft clays’ macropore structure results in large-strain deformation during consolidation, as well as the potential to alter rheological deformation characteristics. A sectionalised regimes rheological model was adopted to describe the structural characteristics under the isotache framework, which led to a nonlinear variation of geometrical boundaries and material properties during consolidation. A semi-analytical theory combining numerical and analytical methods was developed, and the solutions for excess pore water pressure, degree of consolidation, and settlement were derived and computationally programmed. Using parametric analysis, the effects of rheological and structural characteristics on the consolidation behaviour of soft clay were discussed compared to the solutions of other theories. The coefficient of secondary consolidation in the transitional regime has an impact beginning in the middle of primary consolidation. The proposed solutions for degree of consolidation are smaller than the small-strain solutions during the early period of primary consolidation but change larger as consolidation progresses.

Keywords:

• Marine soft clays
• structural characteristics
• rheological consolidation
• large-strain deformation
• multi-layered strata

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 52108329, 52090084), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant 2021T140475), and Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (Grant KQTD20200909113951005).