Consolidation Behavior of Soft Clays with Permeability Anisotropy: A Finite Element Study

Abstract

The stratified nature of natural soft clay deposits fundamentally contradicts the assumption of isotropic permeability inherent in conventional consolidation theories. It assumes that the horizontal permeability coefficient (k_x) equals the vertical coefficient (k_y), although in reality, the ratio k_x/k_y can be as high as 50. A further shortcoming of the theory is that the settlements and water runoff in the soil are only assumed to occur in the vertical direction and a horizontal expansion of the soil is not possible. This study systematically elucidates the coupled effects of permeability anisotropy and model geometry on the consolidation process through 2D finite element analysis. The findings demonstrate that neglecting horizontal permeability leads to a significant overestimation of the consolidation rate and prove that the "critical width ratio" in finite element method analysis is a dynamic parameter dependent on the degree of anisotropy. Although limited to the investigated parameter range. This research provides a novel perspective on the integration of anisotropic parameters into numerical modeling for economical and safe geotechnical design. The predictive capability of the proposed regression equations encourages future investigations.



Received: 25 November 2025 | Revised: 12 February 2026 | Accepted: 6 March 2026



Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.



Data Availability Statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study



Author Contribution Statement

Muhammet Murat Özev: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Recep Akan: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administration.