A Three-Dimensional Nonlinear Model for Soil Consolidation

摘要

This paper is aimed at presenting a three-dimensional mathematical model for soil consolidation. The starting point is the theory of mixtures (see Bowen ([6])), which models the macroscopic behavior of composite systems. A departure from this theory is represented in this paper by a unified Lagrangian description for both the soil skeleton and the fluid phase. In addition, it is also shown how the three-dimensional model suggested by Biot ([3]) and the axisymmetric model introduced by Barron ([1]) can be both derived from this general formulation. Finally, the assumptions under which the coupled flow-deformation problem can be simplified into an uncoupled one and the practical relevance of soil nonlinearity for the axisymmetric problem are discussed.