Drained Creep Test and Creep Model Evaluation of Coastal Soft Clay

Prediction of the long-term behavior of soft clayey soils after construction is of paramount importance for civil and geotechnical engineers. Deformations on the bedded layers occur slowly as a result of exposure to additional high level of stresses. In this study, creep tests of soft clay soils from coastal area were conducted to examine long term stress–strain behaviors with varying stress levels in the laboratory under drained constant loading condition. The creep tests showed that drained features would induce viscoelastic creep behavior. The instantaneous stiffness decreases with deviatoric stress, but increases with confining pressure. Then two component models and three empirical models were compared with laboratory creep tests, component models are found more reliable than empirical models for drained creep test, and the Burgers model is more consistent with the test results. But empirical models have less parameters, especially for different deviatoric stress at same confining pressure.