Semianalytical Solution for Evaluating Viscoelastic Consolidation of Saturated Soils with Overlying Dry Layers

Abstract

Saturated soils with overlying dry layers are frequently encountered in geotechnical engineering. In urban construction works, the underground water level is usually influenced by the extraction of water or complex fluid for industrial uses or oil exploitation tasks. The creep and consolidation behavior of saturated soils with overlying dry layers is drastically different from that of completely saturated soils. This paper presents an investigation on the creep and consolidation behavior of the layered saturated soils with overlying dry layers under the vertical load. With the aid of the Laplace–Hankel transform, typical viscoelastic models (e.g., the Kelvin, the Maxwell, or the standard linear solid model), and the correspondence principle, a semianalytical solution is presented for this investigation. Detailed comparisons between the present results with the published numerical and analytical results are given to confirm the solution, followed by an extensive parametric study examining the effect of types of viscoelastic models, thickness of the overlying layer, and viscosity. This paper aims to present a semianalytical solution to describe the time-dependent consolidation of layered saturated soils with the overlying layer accurately and to provide useful implications for foundation design on those soils.