Stress and pore pressure changes in clay during and after the expansion of a cylindrical cavity

Abstract

Abstract The disturbance of a clay mass, due to either the installation of a driven pile or the expansion of a pressuremeter membrane, is often modelled as a cylindrical cavity expansion. In addition, it is usual (and convenient) to assume that the expansion occurs under conditions of plane strain. For this problem a method of analysis is presented which considers the soil to be a saturated two‐phase material with a pore fluid which flows according to Darcy's Law. Non‐linearity in material behaviour is permitted as long as the effective stress–strain law can be written in an incremental or rate form. The use of a consolidation analysis allows the changes in effective stress and pore pressure to be determined at any stage during both the cavity expansion and the subsequent period of reconsolidation. Expansions may occur at any prescribed rate, including the very fast (undrained) and the very slow (fully drained) case. The technique is illustrated by considering the expansion of a cavity in two different types of elastoplastic soil. It is shown how these solutions may be used to model the disturbance of the soil due to pile driving.