Abstract: The soil in the offshore area of the Bohai Sea is silty soft clay with a high moisture content and low bearing capacity. The sensitivity of soil is high, and disturbances in the construction will affect the soil strength. Coastal soft soils generally demonstrate strong structural properties. In order to explore the intrinsic relationship between the prominent structural properties of the coastal soft soil and the basic physical properties, and to understand the formation mechanism of the structural properties of soft soil, the structural properties of the coastal soft soil in the Bohai Sea estuary were studied throughout experiments that combined with relevant data and references. In this paper, the numerical distribution of the soil sensitivity in the offshore area of the Bohai Sea was evaluated by the unconfined compressive strength tests, and the effects of plasticity index and initial void ratio on the structural properties of soils are analyzed. The results show that the structure of soft soils has a good linear fitting relationship with the plasticity index and the initial void ratio.

Key words: mucky soft clay, sensitivity, plasticity index, initial void ratio