CONSOLIDATION

In order to perform the consolidation analysis the coefficients of the permeability (for horizontal and vertical direction or a unique coefficient) must be given for each layer. The analysis can be performed without or with vertical drains. In the case of vertical drains the user can select the topology of the vertical drains (triangular or rectangular), distance among them, the radius of vertical drains and their length. It is possible to consider consolidation either in both vertical directions (up and down) or towards the surface only. The package displays the following results: computational height of a supplementary virtual layer, the average oedometric modulus of such a layer and final times of the consolidation – for case without or with vertical drains. The module also plots the time history for the case without or with vertical drains using logarithmic scale (Figure 1) and the data used for the plot are stored as a table in the output file. It is further possible to determine the settlement for a given time or to determine the required time for a given rate of consolidation.

Figure 1: The results of the consolidation analysis