Silt soil sediment and consolidation mechanisms

Abstract

Silt soil in estuarine, creek, lake and coastal area is formed by slurry suspension particles' sedimentation and consolidation. For the still environment, great amount of silt soil lead to serious depositions. In order to analysis the mechanisms of silt soil sediment and consolidation, settlement column experiment is adopted to simulate the sedimentation and consolidation process. According to the experiment result, three settlement stages can be defined through the characteristics of settlement curves, which are free sediment stage, logarithmic linear attenuation settlement and consolidation settlement. And an observation is that relationships between soil properties (e.g. initial concentration, clay content and organic content) and settlement process parameters can be determined. Consolidation coefficient c <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">v</inf> as process variable is given based on Terzaghi consolidation theory and settlement column experiment. Sedimentation research achievements show great significances to the regulation and dredging project of Shenzhen River and Bay.