Stochastic Analysis of Settlement Rate in Unsaturated Soils

摘要

Settlement is one of the main problems in geotechnical engineering. Most projects are located above ground water table; therefore the study of settlement in unsaturated soils is important. However inherent variability of the soil parameters which affect settlement dictates that the problem is of a probabilistic nature. In this paper, a stochastic analysis of one-dimensional consolidation of silty clay unsaturated soils is considered. The selected stochastic parameters are the water permeability coefficient, the air permeability coefficient, the degree of saturation and the porosity of unsaturated soil, which are modeled using a truncated normal probability distribution function. A computer program was coded in MATLAB for probabilistic analysis by Monte Carlo simulations. The results clearly show that this method can correctly predict the influence of stochastic input parameters on nonlinear variation of pore water and pore air pressures as well as average degree of consolidation settlement through the soil layer.