Analysis of microstructure and spatially dependent permeability of soft soil during consolidation deformation

Abstract

The fundamental understanding of the consolidation and deformation behaviour of soft soil is of critical importance in engineering geology. The purpose of this study is to develop a nonlinear consolidation model for investigating the deformation behaviour of the montmorillonite soft soil under different engineering loading conditions and the effectiveness of various drainage plate configurations for soil enhancement. The model considers the change of soil microstructure and spatially dependent permeability during the consolidation process. The model predictions were also validated by using collected engineering geology field-testing data and developing advanced imaging processing techniques. The results show that model predictions can reproduce the experimentally observed deformation behaviour of soft soil reasonably well. In addition, the permeability of the soft soil decreases with the decrease of the volume and diameter of pores with the discharge of water from pores during the consolidation process, and there is a negative exponential relationship between pore ratio and depth of the soft soil. Furthermore, it indicates that the vacuum drainage preloading could effectively accelerate the consolidation settlement of the soft soil through playing the role of vertical drainage and reducing the distance of the soil drainage, whereas the increase of the length of the drainage plate has no obvious effect on the settlement of the soil.