Application of Carrillo's method in unsaturated soil consolidation

Abstract

The feasibility of Carrillo's method is confirmed for consolidation problems of unsaturated soils under instantaneous loading in this study. In the plane strain and axial symmetry consolidation models, the coupled governing equations expressed by the excess pore-air and pore-water pressures are transformed into the equivalent uncoupled equations expressed by two functions of excess pore pressure using a decoupled method. Then, two rigorous theorems are used to prove that Carrillo's method is suitable for unsaturated soil consolidation under the plane strain and axial symmetry conditions. Finally, the mathematical formulas by Carrillo's method for unsaturated soil consolidation under plane strain and axisymmetric conditions are presented, and are verified against those of the existing analytical solutions. It turns out that the combinations of existing solutions to the conditions of a single direction flow by the proposed formulas can directly furnish the solutions to unsaturated soil consolidation with both horizontal and vertical flows.