Modelling of anisotropy and consolidation effect on behaviour of sunshine embankment: Australia

This paper investigates the time-dependent behaviour of sunshine embankment on soft clay deposit with and without prefabricated vertical drains. an elasto-viscoplastic model was used to investigate the influence of anisotropy and creep effect on the settlement behaviour of the embankment. the constitutive model,namely acm accounts for combined effects of plastic anisotropy and creep. for comparison,the problem is also analysed with isotropic modified cam clay model which does not consider creep effect. to analyse the pvd improved subsoil,axisymmetric vertical drains were converted into equivalent plane strain conditions using two different mapping approaches. the results of the numerical analyses are compared with the field measurements. the numerical simulations suggest that the anisotropic creep model is able to give a better representation of soft clay response under an embankment loading. the isotropic model which neglects the effects of anisotropy and creep may lead to inaccurate predictions of soft clay response. additionally,the numerical results show that the mapping method used for pvd improved soft clays can accurately predict the consolidation behaviour of the embankment and provide a useful tool for engineering practice. © iran university of science and technology 2016.