Soft Mud Properties: Voigt Model

Abstract

Laboratory tests show that the selected muds, with sediment concentration from 150 to 500 g/l, can resist shear force even after they were severely disturbed. These tests were conducted to clarify why the Voigt element, a simple viscoelastic model, was selected to model the response of mud beds in the wave erosion tests. The viscoelastic constants (shear modulus and viscosity) of the selected sediments were also obtained. The shear modulus increases with the dry density and might reach to a plateau. Inasmuch as the different physical meaning of the viscosity for a viscous fluid and for a viscoelastic material, the viscosity decreases when increasing the dry density, but it decreases when the density is less than a specific value.