A Simple Question About Consolidation

Abstract

The author poses a question about what happens to the lateral stress of a normally consolidated clay aging in an oedometer at constant vertical stress. A written and verbal survey of 32 senior engineers from research and practice backgrounds showed much diversity in their answers to this question, which implies much diversity in how they perceive the behavior of soil. The profession needs answers to this and similar questions that include time effects in the behavior of geotechnical materials.