Practical estimation of compression behaviour of dredged clays with three physical parameters

Understanding the compression behaviour of dredged clays is essential for their effective use with drainage. Measuring consolidation parameters of dredged clays at high initial water contents is a time-consuming and tough work. The research team has accumulated the database of 110 one dimensional incremental load consolidation tests for dredged clays. Based on this database, this study proposes a simple method of determining virgin compression of dredged clays using three physical parameters which can be easily measured. The compression curves of dredged clays can be divided into the pre-yield and the post-yield zones. Basic equations are suggested for describing the compression behaviour of the two zones. The associated parameters are correlated with the initial void ratio and the void ratio at liquid limit. The predicted compression curves are compared with the measured ones with the accumulated database and the independent data available from literature. The error of the void ratios predicted is found to vary within 10% compared with the measured ones. In engineering practice, the work in this study can be applied instead of the time-consuming and tough experiments to simply estimate the compression behaviour of dredged clays.