Abstract: The relative error of the approximated solution of differential equation of one-dimensional nonlinear consolidation of saturated soft soil is quite large. In the light of one-dimensional nonlinear consolidation theory of saturated soft soil foundation, a dimensionless nonlinear consolidation control equation is given in consideration of the influences of nonlinear changes of soft soil’s permeability coefficient and compressibility in the consolidation process, and the weighting factor λ is incorporated to simplify the nonlinear partial differential equation to a linear equation, where the weighting factor λ is a fractional number (0 <λ <1), and a simplified analytic solution considering the weighting factor λ is given in conjunction with the boundary condition. Calculation by MatLab reveals that the Lekha approximation method is the special case of the weighting factor λ=0.5 in this paper. The maximum relative error of the approximate solution and the difference method of Lekha is as high as 19%. By using the simplified solution of the variable weight λ, higher accuracy can be achieved. The proposed simplified solution in this paper is convenient to be applied to engineering practice.

Key words: saturated soft clay, 1D nonlinear consolidation theory, permeability coefficient, compression factor, weighting factor, simplified solution