Applied nonlinear poroelastic theory to estimate hydraulic and elastic parameters in consolidation test

This paper adopted the data of consolidation test and used nonlinear poroelastic theory to construct a numerical model to inverse the parameters of hydraulic conductivity, Young's modulus, and Poisson's ratio at the same time. Consolidation test with six loading steps is implemented and the least square method is used to fit the settlement of each loading step. A stochastic approach named first-order second-moment method was introduced to explore the first and second moment behavior and the uncertainty analysis was provided. The numerical results fit data point well in the former steps but not so well in the later steps due to the secondary settlement of the soil body under a large loading condition. The fitting parameters of hydraulic conductivity and Young's modulus decrease and increase, respectively, with loading increases and these two parameters show a negative correlation in this study. Poisson's ratio, however, does not have obvious change during different loading steps. The results of five steps consolidation modeling are different from the data point due to both the secondary settlement and largely enhanced Young's modulus.