A Development of Practical Analysis Method for the Consolidation Settlements

The settlement measured in the field shows a considerable difference from the predicted settlement due to various factors such as nonhomogeneous soft layers, sampling disturbance, erroneous selection of soil parameters and deficiency of consolidation theories among others. Therefore, analysis of actual settlement behavior based on the instrumentation and measurement data during consolidation period is a very useful procedure in evaluating the rates of consolidation settlement. This paper introduces a new practical method of analyzing consolidation settlement behavior, which is generalized and formulated from the existing analysis methods such as Hyperbolic method, Hoshino method and  method. Through case studies, it is shown that the proposed method is a superior technique in reflecting the measured settlement behavior.