ANALYTICAL MODEL FOR CONSOLIDATION SETTLEMENTS UNDER CENTRIFUGE ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

Accurate estimation of consolidation settlements is of great engineering interest to address the problem of ground subsidence. Centrifuge consolidation testing in the laboratory is gaining importance due to the requirement of shorter testing time in predicting consolidation settlement. An analytical model was presented for estimating the rate of consolidation settlements using one-dimensional large-strain consolidation framework in a centrifuge environment. The model accounted for soil self-weight; relative velocity of the fluid and solid phases; different soil compressibility and hydraulic conductivities; and variation of acceleration factor along the specimen length. Development of the proposed model was first presented and was followed by a numerical solution of the model for different drainage boundary conditions using the finite-difference approach. A comparison of the proposed model with the currently available linear-piecewise model, CC1, on Singapore marine clay data showed that the proposed model...