On the consolidation and creep behaviour of layered viscoelastic gassy sediments

Gassy sediments are frequently encountered in engineering geology and geotechnical engineering. Gas bubbles contained in these sediments significantly change the engineering properties, and further influence the consolidation and creep process. The long term behaviour of gassy sediment is drastically different from that of saturated and unsaturated soils. This study presents an analytical solution for exploring such behaviour within layered viscoelastic gassy sediments under different type of load. An Analytical layer element method together with a Laplace-Hankel transform are employed to solve the governing equations, and the viscoelastic solution is then captured with the aid of the elastic-viscoelastic correspondence principle. Comparisons of the present solution with published semianalytical solutions and experimental results, for a single and double layered soils, are provided. Extensive parametric analyses were carried out to explore the effects of the soil skeleton model, fractional order, type of load, saturation degree and stratification characteristics on consolidation and creep processes. In the present model, the permeability is saturation degree- and porosity-dependent and the modulus of elasticity is time-dependent, which can simulate the long term behaviours of gassy sediments reasonably.

Automated summary

This study presents an analytical solution for exploring the behavior of layered viscoelastic gassy sediments under different types of load. Extensive parametric analyses were carried out to investigate the effects of various factors on consolidation and creep processes. The model considers permeability and modulus of elasticity as time-dependent factors to simulate the long term behavior of gassy sediments.