Three limiting results for biot’s theory of soil consolidation

This paper presents a study on the Biot’s theory of saturated poroelasticity for soil consolidation under three limiting conditions. The three limiting conditions are the initial response, the final response and the limiting response of the drained Poisson’s ratio approaching the undrained Poisson’s ratio. Under the three limiting conditions, the Biot’s theory of saturated poroelasticity is reduced to the theory of class elasticity. As a result, the limiting results are useful for understanding of the limitations of the Biot’s theory and for verification of the numerical results obtained using the theory for any specific consolidation problems encountered in saturated soils. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the importance of the findings.