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.
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.