Numerical assessment of equivalent hydraulic conductivity and electro-osmotic conductivity for electro-osmotic consolidation under two-dimensional plane-strain analysis

Electro-osmotic consolidation is a promising method to remove pore water from soft soils. Numerical models have been widely used to simulate the underlying flow-mechanical–electrical processes and predict the consolidation behavior of soft soils subjected to electro-osmotic treatment. In the present study, we proposed a method to convert a 3D electro-osmotic consolidation model to an equivalent 2D model to alleviate the notorious computational burden associated with high-fidelity numerical simulations. The accuracy of the equivalent 2D model was verified by comparing with the original 3D model in terms of surface settlement and degree of consolidation. The behavior of the equivalent 2D model was highly depended on electrode configurations. The prediction accuracy of the 2D model increased with the decrease of the spacing between electrodes with same polarity. For the cases we analyzed, the 2D model showed accurate predictions with the final relative error of surface settlement in the range of ± 6%. The equivalent method was then applied to a field test to further validate its feasibility in real-world problems. The simulated surface settlement from the 2D model coincided well with field measurements, indicating that the equivalent 2D model was able to analyze realistic scenarios with complex electrode configurations and boundary conditions.