Abstract: Considering Hansob’s seepage flow law and the Merchant’s rheological model, a one-dimensional rheological consolidation model of soft clay under cyclic loadings is established, which is described by using two variables, the excessive water pore pressure and the vertical strain . The rheological consolidation equations are solved by using FlexPDE software; and then the results are compared to those of existing literature to verify the reliability of the numerical solutions. Meanwhile, the behaviors of soil during rheological consolidation are investigated and the effects of the Hansob’s flow parameters, the parameters of Merchant’s rheological model on rheological consolidation are analyzed and discussed in detail. The results show that the average degree of consolidation in terms of the excessive water pore pressure and that associated with settlement vary predictably with the cyclic loading, and the maximum value of is larger than that of at the same time. Further, when the loading cycles are very big, may reach the final cyclic steady-state while the peak value of increases with the cycles due to the rheological effect. Moreover, the peak values of and both decreases with the increase of the parameters m and of Hansob’s flow model. The peak value of decreases with increasing the rheological model parameter F, while the peak value of is on the contrary. Further, the peak values of and both decrease with the increase of the rheological model parameter . The average degree of consolidation under cyclic loadings is in a circulation state all the time, which never reaches 100%, and it is smaller than that under ramp loading.

Key words: soft clay, cyclic loading, Hansob’s flow, Merchant’s rheological model, one-dimensional rheological consolidation, characteristics of consolidation