Analytical solutions describing the consolidation of a multi-layered soil under circular loading are presented. From the governing equations of saturated poroelastic soil in a cylindrical coordinate system, the eighthorder state-space equation of consolidation is obtained by eliminating the variation of time t using the Laplace transform together with the technique of Fourier expansions with respect to the coordinate θ and the Hankel transform with respect to coordinate r . The solution of the eighth-order state-space equation is derived directly by using the Laplace transform and its inversion of the z-domain. Based on the continuity between layers and the boundary conditions, the transfer-matrix method is utilized to derive the solutions for the consolidation of a multi-layered soil under circular loading in the transformed domain. By the inversion of the Laplace transform and the Hankel transform, the analytical solutions in the physical domain are obtained. A numerical analysis based on the solutions is carried out by a corresponding program.
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