Fully coupled solution for the consolidation of poroelastic soil around elastoplastic stone column

The paper presents a new fully coupled elastoplastic solution for the response of a poroelastic thick-walled soil cylinder around an elastoplastic stone column using Biot’s (J Appl Phys 12:155–164, 1941) consolidation theory. A unit cell concept is adopted for the soil–stone column analysis, and the problem is formulated in cylindrical coordinates. Expressions for excess pore pressure, stresses and displacements in the Laplace domain are derived analytically taking into account elastic or plastic behavior of the column. The inverse of the Laplace transform is evaluated numerically using an efficient scheme to obtain the final elastoplastic solution in time domain. The validity of the new solution has been checked against finite element solution and compared with some previously developed analytical methods for the stone column analysis. The results showing settlements, change in excess pore pressures and stresses with time are presented in terms of time factor. The proposed solution can be used to calculate transient state of settlements, distribution of deformations, stresses and excess pore pressures in soil and column under instantaneous or time-dependent monotonically increasing rigid vertical load.