Classical Theory of Consolidation for Saturated Porous Media

Classical Theory of Consolidation for Saturated Porous Media 

Soil is a mixture of a solid phase, a liquid phase (i.e., water) and a gaseous phase. Saturated soil is a two-phase material which consists of a solid phase and a liquid phase. The formulation of a theory for a saturated soil commenced with the concept of the effective stress of Terzaghi at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Terzaghi s concept was extended by Biot to a three dimensional consolidation theory. 

In this Chapter, we review the classical theory of consolidation for saturated soils under the assumption that both the intrinsic part of the solid phase and the fluid are incompressible, and that the deformation of the soil results from a nonlinear 

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In Chap. 5, Classical Theory of Diffusion and Seepage Problems in Porous Media and Chap. 6, Classical Theory of Consolidation for Saturated Porous Media we review and re-organize the classical soil mechanics in terms of modern continuum mechanics looking at the mass conservation law for a multi-component solution, we show that the diffusion field is strictly connected with the seepage field. 

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