Abstract: In order to study the influence of the temperature change on the consolidation for saturated soils, this paper presents a semi-analytical solution to the one-dimensional thermal consolidation equations considering the heat conduction of the semi-permeable drainage boundary on basis of the seepage and heat transfer equations. The semi-analytical solutions of excess pore pressure, temperature difference and soil settlement are firstly derived by using the Laplace transform upon the one-dimensional thermal consolidation equations considering the coupled and uncoupled thermo-mechanical models, respectively. Then the analytical solutions for a given time domain are obtained by the Crump’s method. Verification is conducted by reducing the proposed solutions into those under the conditions of the single drainage boundary and the assumptions of Terzaghi’s consolidation, which shows that the proposed solutions are reliable and in good agreement with the existing solutions from literature. Finally, several examples are analyzed to investigate the effects of semi-permeable boundary parameters, thermal diffusion coefficient, consolidation coefficient and temperature increase on the consolidation process of saturated soils under varying loading. All results demonstrate that the consolidation behavior is significantly affected by the investigated parameters.

Key words: saturated soils, semi-permeable boundary, thermal consolidation, coupled thermo-mechanical model, Laplace transform