ANALYSIS OF ONE-DIMENSIONAL THERMAL CONSOLIDATION OF UNSATURTED SOILS

In this paper, a consolidation model for unsaturated soils under non-isothermal conditions was established, and corresponding semi-analytic solutions were obtained to investigate the influence of temperature variations on the consolidation of unsaturated soils. An improved controlling equation for one-dimensional thermal consolidation of unsaturated soils was proposed by integrating the previously reported one-dimensional thermal consolidation equation and one-dimensional heat conduction equation. Furthermore, Laplace transform and inverse Laplace transform methods were applied to derive semi-analytic solutions for excess pore-air pressure, excess pore-water pressure, and settlement under non-isothermal conditions. The current solutions can degenerate into the solutions for the conditions of isothermal unsaturated soil and non-isothermal saturated soil, and computational results indicate their reliability and accuracy. Additionally, an example analysis was conducted to explore the influence of thermal diffusion coefficient and temperature on the consolidation of unsaturated foundations. The research results demonstrate that variations in the thermal diffusion coefficient and temperature significantly affect the consolidation process of the unsaturated stratum. Specifically, an increase in the thermal diffusion coefficient can shorten the consolidation time, while an increase in temperature will decrease the final settlement.