A brief review of the former studies on the mechanisms of soil rheology and microstructure is presented. Then a microstructure model and a set of rheological constitutive relations for soft clays, which describe how the rheological consolidation settlement develops, are established in the framework of the catastrophe theory. The validity of this model is verified by a series of rheological consolidation experiments with different loading rates. The experimental data show that creep deformation can be clearly observed in these tests, and the consolidation settlement is loading rate dependent. The characteristics of the deformation can be explained and reproduced successfully using the model. It can be concluded that only the biggest set of voids would collapse for one load increment. Parameters in the model, k and η, are gained by curve fitting. With only two free parameters, good fits of the data are achieved.
