Development and performance of new simplified method for soft soil with creep under multi-staged loading

Abstract

In this paper, a new simplified method (de-coupled method) is presented for calculating consolidation settlements of a soft soil layer with creep under multi-staged loadings. All equations of this new simplified method are derived for a general multi-staged loading case. Different stress-states of the soil layer are considered. At the same time, a fully coupled finite element computer program with an Elastic Visco-Plastic (EVP) model and Hypothesis A method are used to calculate the consolidation settlements of the same soil layer with the same conditions. Then, the settlement results using this new simplified method are presented and compared with results from the finite element (FE) simulations and the Hypothesis A method. Based on the comparison, it is demonstrated that the new simplified method is much better than the Hypothesis A method. In addition, this new simplified method is used in the Berthierville test site subjected to three-staged loading. The comparison of calculated results and measured data demonstrates that the new simplified method is easy to use by simple spread-sheet calculation and has a good accuracy for the situations analyzed in this study.