In order to found an applicable equation of consolidation for gassy muddy clay, an effective stress formula of gas-charged nearly-saturated soils was introduced. And then, a consolidation equation was derived. Subsequently, supposing soils were under tangential loading, the expressions of pore water pressure were presented. The analytic solution of pore water pressure was attempted to be validated by the measured values in a real embankment. The parameters in the expressions of pore water pressure were gotten by the method of trial. The result shows that the consolidation model is rational and the analytic solution of pore water pressure is correct. The following conclusions can be made: 1) the influence of bubbles on the compressibility of pore fluid should be considered; 2) the effective stress would be influenced by bubbles, and the consolidation would depend on the compressibility of soil skeleton: the softer the soils are, the more distinct the influence of bubbles is; for normal clay, the influence of bubbles on the effective stress may be commonly neglected.
In the research field of ground water, hydraulic gradient is studied for decades. In the consolidation field, hydraulic gradient is yet to be investigated as an important hydraulic variable. So, the variation of hydraulic gradient in nonlinear finite strain consolidation was focused on in this work. Based on lab tests, the nonlinear compressibility and nonlinear permeability of Ningbo soft clay were obtained. Then, a strongly nonlinear governing equation was derived and it was solved with the finite element method.Afterwards, the numerical analysis was performed and it was verified with the existing experiment for Hong Kong marine clay. It can be found that the variation of hydraulic gradient is closely related to the magnitude of external load and the depth in soils. It is interesting that the absolute value of hydraulic gradient(AVHG) increases rapidly first and then decreases gradually after reaching the maximum at different depths of soils. Furthermore, the changing curves of AVHG can be roughly divided into five phases. This five-phase model can be employed to study the migration of pore water during consolidation.
