A review on consolidation theories and its application

Compressibility of clays is mainly caused by expulsion of water between the soil grains and slipping of particles to new position to attain greater densities. Consolidation plays an important role in stability analysis for the embankment, footings or a column constructed on clayey soils. The settlement behaviour of these structures and the pore pressure needs to be investigated for construction on these soils. The consolidation problem has been formulated by many researchers by coupling the soil deformation and the pore pressure. Though stress-strain behaviour of soil is highly non-linear, initial works on consolidation analysis idealised soil as linearly elastic material. The behaviour of waste materials such as dredged materials, mine tailings, oil sand sludge and waste sludge is quite different than conventional soils as they experience very large deformations and changes in void ratio. The present paper reviews the various consolidation theories for soils and waste materials.