Long-term Non-linear creep and swelling behavior of Hong Kong marine deposits in oedometer condition

In this paper, long-term time-dependent behavior of Hong Kong Marine Deposits (HKMD) under the loading stage and unloading stage is investigated by multi-staged loading oedometer test. Special emphasis has been given to study creep and swelling behavior. It is found that the clayey soil demonstrates the creep behavior during the loading stage, whereas it shows the swelling behavior during the unloading stage. The analysis of the creep behavior shows that there exists a linear trend between creep strain and time (in log-scale) within a certain period, whereas a nonlinear relationship in a long term view. Similar result is found for the swelling behavior. A nonlinear function is found to be suitable to predict the long-term creep and swelling behavior. The creep strain limit and swelling strain limit can be obtained if the nonlinear function is adopted to fit the experimental data. In addition, a new modified Elastic Visco-Plastic model considering Swelling (EVPS model) is proposed and presented, which considers the nonlinear creep and swelling behavior. In this modified EVPS model, the final creep and swelling equilibrium stress-strain state can also be obtained when the time is infinite.