Surcharge combined with vacuum preloading is a common technique for accelerating the
consolidation process in ground improvement. A unit cell model for the axisymmetric
consolidation of a soft soil using a prefabricated vertical drain (PVD) under a surcharge,
combined with vacuum preloading, is investigated in this study. Based on this model,
analytical solutions for a multi-layer soil system are put forward and the explicit expressions
for two-layer and one-layer systems are presented. The accuracy of the proposed solution is …