International Journal of Geotechnical Engineering

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Consolidation and permeability behaviour of

Newark Bay’s dredged sediments by seepage-
induced consolidation test

Masoud Janbaz & Ali Maher

To cite this article: Masoud Janbaz & Ali Maher (2017) Consolidation and permeability
behaviour of Newark Bay’s dredged sediments by seepage-induced consolidation
test, International Journal of Geotechnical Engineering, 11:2, 120-126, DOI:
10.1080/19386362.2016.1195034
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19386362.2016.1195034

Published online: 27 Jun 2016.

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 Consolidation and permeability behaviour of
Newark Bay’s dredged sediments by seepage-
induced consolidation test
Masoud Janbaz* and Ali Maher
Annually, two to four million cubic yards of sediments need to be dredged to maintain the navigational depth
for cargo ships in NY/NJ harbours. The dredged sediments are hydraulically disposed into impoundment
ponds and capped. The limitations on disposal sites force the designer to design the ponds to its
fullest capacity which requires understanding of consolidation behaviour of these sediments. Dredged
sediments, however, do not follow the traditional consolidation behaviour proposed by Terzaghi. The
limitations and simplifying assumptions of infinitesimal strain and constant permeability make the traditional
consolidation theory impractical dealing with these sediments. Therefore, a consolidation apparatus
based on seepage force was constructed in Rutgers University to account for all of the shortcomings of
traditional consolidation. The outcome of this research programme showed that this method of testing is
applicable to the soft sediment consolidation testing and provides reliable and repeatable results.
Keywords: Dredged sediments, Seepage-induced consolidation, Index properties

Introduction settlement to play an important role in the consolidation of

Each year, approximately two to four million cubic yards of
soft sediment need to be dredged from NY/NJ bay areas in
order to create enough depth in waterways for ships to carry
goods. This is economically very crucial since bulk carriers
need to get in and out of ports which play a significant role in
the economy of the area. In general, dredging whether mechan-
ically or hydraulically will be the solution to the problem but
by putting more strict environmental regulations nowadays,
dealing with proper ways of disposal, the sediments are getting
more challenging. Once the sediment is dredged, they should
be disposed either in upland disposal facilities such as landfills,
confined disposal facilities or confined aquatic disposals. The
fine nature of the sediments which has very high water con-
tent restricts the usage of traditional consolidation tests. Large
strains and settlement due to self-weight of the sediments are
two major factors which cause traditional consolidometer to be
ineffective. Due to the value of the huge footprint of disposal
areas and environmental regulations on the aquatic disposal
facilities, designing the catchment areas capacity to the fullest
potential requires knowledge of consolidation or time settle-
ment behaviour of the sediments.
The consolidation behaviour of fine sediments is not just in
dredging operations. Slurried minerals from mining operations,
in the form of mine tailings, have the same challenges when
disposed. The low density of material causes the self-weight
Department of Civil Engineering, Rutgers, The State University of New
Jersey, Piscataway, USA
*Corresponding author, email mj365@scarletmail.rutgers.edu
this type of material. Since the consolidation process is very
time-consuming, it will strongly influence the reclamation
planning, future utilisation of the landfill, vegetation and so
on. Therefore, it is very important to precisely evaluate the
consolidation behaviour of this material to better estimate the
useful life of a disposal area and the time required to achieve
reclamation.
Newark Bay sediment characteristics
According to Maher et al. (2013), New Jersey waterways is
divided into three general regions regarding physical properties
of the sediments, i.e. harbour region, shore region and Delaware
region. The harbour region is mostly comprised of fine-grained
silts and clays, shore regions are primarily sand and Delaware
region with a combination of all grain sizes. Understanding
the geotechnical behaviour of sediment is based on obtaining
key geotechnical indices such as index properties, permeability
and strength of the material. Depending on the type of appli-
cation and project specifications, the geotechnical experimen-
tal plan can change. In general, a wide variety of sediment
types are dredged from the Newark Bay every year because
of navigation channel maintenance. The general overview of
the material includes fine-grained silt, red clay, glacial till and
sand (Maher et al. 2013). The sediments tend to have organic
content of about 10% with high water content which makes it
difficult to handle. The general soil classification, according
to Unified Soil Classification System (USCS) of Newark Bay,
is high plasticity silt (MH) or organic silt (OH) depending on

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Received 21 April 2016; accepted 24 May 2016
120 DOI 10.1080/19386362.2016.1195034 International Journal of Geotechnical Engineering   2017  VOL 11   NO 2
 Janbaz and Maher Consolidation and permeability behaviour of Newark Bay’s dredged sediments by seepage induced consolidation test
Table 1 Index properties of Newark Bay silt sediment
USCS classifi-
Location cation Sand (%) Silt (%)
Newark Bay, OH 19 72
Port Elizabeth
Newark Bay, OH 22 70
Port Elizabeth
Newark Bay, OH 14 80
Port Elizabeth
Newark Bay, OH 40 50
Lower Channel
Newark Bay CH 6.5 33
Arthur Kill OH 10 78
Lower Passaic OH 4 74
the organic content of the sample. Organic content could be
as high as 10%, and the rest of the soil is composed of mostly
silt and up to 20% of clayey material. The water content (ratio
of weight of water over weight of dry soil) varies depending
on the sampling method and location but could be between 70
and 180%. Water content, liquid limit (LL), plastic limit (PL),
amount of particles fraction and permeability of the Newark
Bay are presented in Table 1 (Maher et al. 2013).
As can be seen from the table, the overall physical properties
of the soft sediment of Newark Bay vary around organic silts
with high water content. In Fig. 1, the overall map of the bay is
shown. The high water content and type of the sediments pro-
posing low density type of sediment that can be prone to high
compressibility and low hydraulic conductivity which needs
more investigation.
Finite strain consolidation and seepage-
induced consolidation concept
The theory of consolidation is designed to predict the progress
of deformation of an element of a saturated porous media
that is subjected to an imposed stress. In general, a porous
material can be considered as a system of components that
interact with each other and each component is governed by
its constitutive relationships, namely stress–strain and flow.
Traditional geotechnical engineering applications of porous
media consist of two phases: a deformable mineral skele-
ton (soil) and an incompressible Newtonian fluid (water).
Consolidation is the deformation caused by outflow of pore
water from a saturated soil skeleton. Since the system is con-
sidered to be saturated at all time, the outflow of pore water is
equal to the deformation of soil or increase in effective stress
in the soil skeleton. In this case, the water flow is stimulated
by any change in the imposed stresses on the soil skeleton,
i.e. either difference in the hydraulic head between the top
and the bottom of the soil layer or by a surcharged load. If
the only surcharge applied to the soil skeleton is the buoyant
weight of the solid particle, then the problem is said to be
self-weight consolidation which is neglected in traditional
consolidation theory and plays an important role in soft (low
density) sediment consolidation.
The governing equation of finite strain consolidation the-
ory is based on Gibson, England and Hussey’s work in 1967.
Since the traditional Terzaghi theory of consolidation cannot
consider large strains, self-weight effect and the variation of
 International Journal of Geotechnical Engineering   2017  VOL 11   NO 2
Moisture Permeability
Clay (%) content (%) LL-PL (cm/sec)
9 480 94–54 3.8 × 10−8
8 175 88–52 3.8 × 10−8
6 146 100–64 3.8 × 10−8
2 70 54–30 5.5 × 10−8
60.5 35 39–26 1 × 10−7
12 181 113–70 –
22 144 108–60 2.9 × 10−8
permeability with void ratio, the Gibson’s theory plays the fun-
damental role in the consolidation of soft sediments.
There are a number of experimental tests suggested by
researchers in order to investigate the consolidation character-
istics of soft sediments with high water content (Znidarcic and
Liu 1989). The consolidation under seepage was first proposed
by Imai (1979), and many researchers tried to come up with a
set-up which can accurately determine the consolidation of soft
sediments (Carrier et al. 1983; Cargill 1986; Scott et al. 1986;
Aydilek et al. 1999; Sridharan and Prakash 2001; Erten et al.
2011). Among all of them, Znidarcic and Liu (1989) developed
a set-up that can determine the consolidation of fine sediments
in timely manner with high accuracy. His set-up is based on
seepage-induced consolidation concept and can determine the
compressibility and hydraulic conductivity of the sediment in
one test but in multiple steps.
The seepage-induced consolidation test (SICT) has been
used for over two decades to determine the consolidation
characteristics of soft sediments such as dredged sediments
and mine tailings (Abu-Hejle and Znidarcic 1994; Berilgen
et al. 2006; Pedroni and Aubertin 2008; Znidarcic et al. 2011;
Estepho 2014). The efficient procedure of the test can result
in the permeability and compressibility relationship of soft
sediments.
The SICT consists of three stages. Different stages will
result in different void ratio measurements in different stress
levels. The first stage is sedimentation column in order to get
zero stress void ratio, the second stage is consolidation under
low effective stresses created by seepage force, and the last
stage is consolidation under load. There are always intermediate
stages based on the magnitude of stress of interest. The first
stage is the sedimentation column which is performed aside
from the actual seepage testing apparatus and may take weeks
to be completed. In the first stage, the slurry from the dredging
station will be poured into graduated cylinder and will be left
to settle down under its own weight (Fig. 2).
The average void ratio of the settled material will be consid-
ered as zero stress void ration e00. The second and third stages
will be performed in the SICT device which is shown in Fig. 3.
The set-up consists of water reservoir to provide water to
the system, sample chamber to contain the sample, syringe
pump to induce suction and initiate seepage-based consolida-
tion on sample and data acquisition system for recording the
axial deformation read by LVDT, seepage rate, stresses and
differential pressure between top and bottom of the sample.
121
Janbaz and Maher Consolidation and permeability behaviour of Newark Bay’s dredged sediments by seepage induced consolidation test

1 Newark Bay map (Shrestha et al. 2014)

The second stage of the test is based on inducing suc- consolidation on sample. Axial deformation and hydraulic
tion of water from underneath of the sample and initiating conductivity of sample will be recorded. The final stage of the

122 International Journal of Geotechnical Engineering   2017  VOL 11   NO 2

 Janbaz and Maher Consolidation and permeability behaviour of Newark Bay’s dredged sediments by seepage induced consolidation test
2 Sedimentation column
test, which always will be divided in smaller steps, is based on
the amount of desired load and inducing the lowest possible
suction for hydraulic conductivity measurements. At the end of
the test, the sample will be dried in oven and the total volume
and weight of solids will be calculated. The results of the test
will be analysed by Excel spreadsheet based on SICTA pro-
gram principles (Abu-Hejleh and Znidarcic, 1994). The com-
pressibility and hydraulic conductivity relations with void ratio
are based on equation proposed by Liu and Znidarcic (1991)
and Somogyi (1979) which is widely accepted and used by
researchers (Pane and Schiffman 1997; Gjerapic and Znidarcic
2007; Jeeravipoolvarn et al. 2009; Bonin et al. 2014). The pro-
posed equation for compressibility is the following:
3 Seepage-induced consolidation apparatus
 International Journal of Geotechnical Engineering   2017  VOL 11   NO 2
B
e = A(𝜎 � + Z)
And the hydraulic conductivity is based on:
K = C × eD
In these equations, e is void ratio, σ′ is effective stress and K
is the hydraulic conductivity. A, B, C, D and Z are the model
parameters which are used to predict the consolidation behav-
iour for all stress levels.
Benchmark tests
In order to confirm that the set-up provides repeatable and
reliable data sets, kaolinite clay was tested in Rutgers set-up
and the results are compared to Estepho (2014). Therefore,
samples were prepared based on water content of 1.36 to sim-
ulate the test of slurries done by Prof. Znidarcic at University
of Colorado and Estepho at University of British Columbia.
The results of compressibility and hydraulic conductivity are
presented in Figs. 4 and 5.
The constitutive equations are presented in Table 2.
The results of benchmark test at Rutgers show good com-
patibility with results of similar tests on similar sediments.
Although the test set-up in Rutgers University is modified to
use deadweight for simpler troubleshooting purposes, but the
results are quite satisfactory and reliable.
Test results
Eleven seepage-induced consolidation tests were performed
on sediment samples from Newark Bay. The testing program
for each sample starts with self-weight consolidation test on
a graduated cylinder which allows the slurry to settle under
its own weight for almost a week or two in some cases which
results in zero void ratio calculation. The index properties of
the samples are presented in Table 3.
The grain size distribution of all of the samples is presented
in Fig. 6.
After the sedimentation column test for self-weight consoli-
dation, the sample is prepared for the seepage test by measuring
123
Janbaz and Maher Consolidation and permeability behaviour of Newark Bay’s dredged sediments by seepage induced consolidation test

Void Ratio-Compressibility Void Ratio-Permeability

4 6
CU
CU
3.5 UBC
5 UBC
3 Rutgers
Rutgers
4
2.5

2 3
e

e
1.5
2
1
1
0.5

0 0
0.01 0.1 1 10 100 1.00E-11 1.00E-10 1.00E-09 1.00E-08 1.00E-07 1.00E-06
k

4 Compressibility curve comparison 5 Hydraulic conductivity curve comparison

Table 2 Constitutive relationships on benchmark test

Constitutive relationship Compressibility Permeability

CU boulder (
e = 2.332 𝜎 � + 0.075
)−0.181
k = 5.9E − 10e4.22
UBC ( �
e = 2.559 𝜎 + 0.317
)−0.175
k = 6.73E − 10e4.03
Rutgers ( �
e = 2.324 𝜎 + 0.11
)−0.176
k = 5E − 10e4.82

Table 3 Index properties

Test # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
ω% 193.61 183.53 189.60 207.02 193.61 195.70 193.7 189.78 181.36 182.53 195.6
Gs 2.61 2.55 2.58 2.42 2.68 2.95 2.52 2.38 2.34 2.31 2.81
LL% 128 118 120 125 119 124 116 121 110 120 130
PL% 98 85 87 94 82 74 88 95 91 99 71

100
6.00 T1
T1
90
T2 T2
80 5.00
T3 T3
70
T4 4.00 T4
60
% Finer

T5
T5
50 T6 3.00
e

T6
40 T7
T8 2.00 T7
30
T9 T8
20
1.00
T10 T9
10
T11 T10
0 0.00
10 1 0.1 0.01 0.001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 10 100 T11
Sieve size (mm)

6 Grain size distribution curve 7 Compressibility curve

the moisture content and specific gravity. Then, the first stage
of the seepage test under small amount of surcharge (about
0.3 kPa) will be performed. The sample will be under suction
by syringe pump and the surcharge will be due to top porous
stone, top cap and plunger. The last part of the test depends on
the amount of desired stress level that will be applied in practice
by capping the impoundment ponds. This step will have some
intermediate stress levels that will densify the sample for the
desired stress level. The minimum hydraulic conductivity
will be applied on the sample for permeability measurements.
Usually the last stage of the test starts with 1 kPa and will con-
tinue with 10, 25, 50 and the final surcharge which is around

124 International Journal of Geotechnical Engineering   2017  VOL 11   NO 2

 Janbaz and Maher Consolidation and permeability behaviour of Newark Bay’s dredged sediments by seepage induced consolidation test

Table 4 Present the equations for compressibility and permeability curves

Test Compressibility Permeability

1 �
e = 2.557(𝜎 + 0.0485) −0.173
k = 1E–13 e11.447
2 e = 2.803(𝜎 � + 0.0449)−0.154 k = 9E–12 e5.367
3 e = 2.859(𝜎 � + 0.1354)−0.209 k = 2E–11 e6
4 e = 3.164(𝜎 � + 0.0208)−0.117 k = 2E–16 e14.461
5 e = 2.807(𝜎 � + 0.0964)−0.196 k = 5E–11 e5.038
6 e = 2.18(𝜎 � + 0.2317)−0.401 k = 2E–10 e5.188
7 e = 2.669(𝜎 � + 0.0341)−0.136 k = 3E–14 e11.422
8 e = 3.266(𝜎 � + 0.1501)−0.176 k = 3E–13 e9.561
9 e = 3.142(𝜎 � + 0.1387)−0.123 k = 3E–16 e15.35
10 e = 2.959(𝜎 � + 0.0435)−0.114 k = 5E–17 e16.053
11 e = 2.557(𝜎 � + 0.0485)−0.173 k = 4E–12 e4.882

5 T1 England and Hussey can well define the self-weight and large
4.5 T2 strains which happen in the consolidation of dredged sediments
4 T3 in reality. The testing device was constructed and calibrated
3.5 T4 for testing of dredged sediments in Rutgers University. The
3
T5 results show that the seepage-induced consolidation test set-up
2.5 can provide reliable and repeatable data sets for consolidation
e

T6
2
T7
of dredged sediments and can aid designers to precisely cal-
1.5
T8
culate the amount of settlement of these sediments under any
1 surcharge. The compressibility and permeability of sediment
T9
0.5 are believed to be influenced by their index properties and can
T10
0 be the reason for different test results. Authors believe that
T11
1E-26 1E-22 1E-18 1E-14 1E-10 1E-06
further investigation is needed to prove the influence of index
k(m/s) properties on consolidation behaviour of soft sediments.

8 Permeability curve
100–150 kPa. In order to obtain the model parameters (A, B,
Z…), we just need one set of stresses and corresponding void
ratio and the rest of the load steps in final stage is redundant.
The results of tests are presented in Fig. 7 for the compressibil-
ity curves and in Fig. 8 for the permeability curves.
Table 4 presents the equations for compressibility and per-
meability curves. The permeability is in m/s. The parameter
estimation model for compressibility curve is well suited for
zero effective stress (because of Z parameter in the model)
and can define the zero void ratio at zero stress level which
can overcome other models shortcomings (Carrier et al. 1983;
McVay et al. 1986). The difference in the observed data roots
from the difference in the index properties. Berilgen et al.
(2006) proposed sets of equations which correlate index prop-
erties with model parameters (A, B, Z, C and D). According
to Berilgen, plasticity index, initial saturated void ratio and
liquidity index influence the consolidation behaviour of soft
sediments. Figures 7 and 8 prove that the compressibility of soft
sediments is highly non-linear in low effective stress range and
the permeability can change in multiple orders of magnitude in
different void ratios during the consolidation.
Discussion and conclusion
The results of eleven seepage-induced consolidation tests on
sediments from Newark Bay are presented. As the results show,
the consolidation behaviour of the soft sediment is non-linear
and cannot be modelled with traditional consolidation theories.
Finite strain consolidation theory of consolidation by Gibson,
ORCID
Masoud Janbaz http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6613-5587
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