A fully coupled isoparametric formulation based on the finite element method to solve consolidation problems due to the drawdown of the water table is presented in this paper. The primary variables of this formulation are displacement and total hydraulic head. The free surface is considered as a changing contour and its location is determined by the use of the residual flow procedure, in which the water, firstly stored in the porous of the soil between two consecutive free surfaces, is imposed as a flow across the actual free surface. A strategy to reduce the permeability, necessary to minimize the flow in regions with negative pore pressure, is adopted. The numerical model is implemented in an ANLOG computational code to solve problems in a plane strain state. Examples to validate this formulation are presented.
consolidation; drawdown of the water table; free surface; FEM
