An Experimental Study of the Size Effect's Impact on Consolidation
Behaviors of Dredged Silt
Abstract
In order to investigate the sample size’s impact on consolidation
behavior, this study used the automatic air pressure consolidometer to
conduct numerous consolidation tests on three kinds of dredged silt
samples at different heights in Qianwan, Shenzhen, China. The key
findings made the following three significant contributions. (1) The
compression curves of samples of different sizes have three stages:
small load disturbance, elastic deformation and plastic deformation. The
void ratio in the latter two stages decreases with the increase of
sample height. (2) The stable strain and compression index of the
samples decrease when the samples’ height increases, and its
consolidation coefficient decreases significantly with the increase of
the sample height, while the sample height has a limited impact on the
structural yield stress. (3) Due to the reason that dredged silt and
marine silt have different formation processes, stress history, and
material composition, the permeability coefficient of dredged silt is
greater than that of marine silt. When the consolidation pressure is
lower, the consolidation coefficient of dredged silt is less than that
of marine silt. The difference between the consolidation coefficient of
two kinds of silt decreases with the increase of consolidation pressure.