Equal strain vertical drain consolidation with creep

Analytical solutions to vertical drain consolidation problems are only available for constitutive models where strain is a function of effective stress. Strain rate dependent soil models are not amenable to ana-lytical solution due to their non-linear nature. By relaxing the requirement for an analytical solution, the equal strain radial consolidation equations provide a simple numerical technique of investigating such non-linear models. The equal strain assumption produces a second order non-linear ordinary differential equation in terms of strain, strain rate, and strain acceleration which is straightforward to solve using freely available ODE solvers. Strain dependent permeability and time dependent loading/vacuum are easily incorporated into the numerical model. This paper presents a parametric study of the new analysis method using the creep model of Yin and Graham (1996).