Numerical Solutions for Consolidation of Under-Consolidated Dredger Fill under Vacuum Preloading

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sun, L.; Jia, T.; Zhuo, R.; Yan, S., and Guo, B., 2015. Numerical solutions for consolidation of under-consolidated dredger fill under vacuum preloading. This paper presents the numerical solutions for consolidation of the under-consolidated dredger fills. By a field test the delivery rules of negative vacuum pressure in the PVDs are studied, the relationship between permeability and effective stress of the high water content soil is also studied by an experiment, then a plain strain FEM program was coded for the dredger fills consolidation analysis in which the nonlinearity constitutive relation Duncan-Chang's model is applied into the Biot's consolidation theory, and the nonlinear permeability law is also employed in the Biot's consolidation theory. As an under-consolidated soil, the self-weight that is not consolidated before the enforcement and negative vacuum pressure is included as the consolidation load in this paper. At last, two project cases were calculated using this program, the resul...