Landslides represent major threats to life and property in many areas of the world, such as the landslides in the Three Gorges Dam area in mainland China.

The accuracy of the initial void ratio is vitally important to ensure the exact position of the normal compression line of remolded clay. In this article, a series of standard oedometer tests were performed on four different types of commercial clay in slurry state to analyze the error sources that affect the experimental accuracy of the initial void ratio. For remolded clay, it is found that the extra water at the end of the test has an unfavorable effect on the calculation accuracy. The precautions and steps for ensuring the experimental accuracy of initial void ratio in the oedometer test are detailed. According to the error propagation theory, the error estimation of five methods commonly used in the literature for calculating the initial void ratio is revealed. On this basis, a novel data fusion approach based on Bayesian inference is proposed to determine the initial void ratio of remolded clay, which fully considers the uncertainty of measurement error. The effectiveness of the proposed Bayesian data fusion approach has been validated by the data from mercury intrusion porosity testing, promoting the application of Bayesian theory in soil mechanics.

Offshore engineering is facing the challenges of modeling large deformation problems combined with the complexity of spatial variability of soils. This complex large deformation problem has not been extensively investigated, where one reason is believed due to limited practical approaches available. In this paper, the complex problem has been addressed through the in-house developed approach by implementing a remeshing-based large deformation method into finite element framework, where the spatial variability of the soil domain is realized by correlating the generated random field with the soil property distribution. By carrying large deformation analysis, the penetration of a T-bar penetrometer, the installation of a spudcan foundation and the sliding process of a slope are presented. This study provides an effective approach to investigate the large deformation problems by considering the effect of spatial variability, where the coupling between the complex soil properties and the excessive large displacement has not been intensively investigated.