The rheological characteristics of clay soils were described by Merchant mode. The governing equation for consolidation of layered clay soils exhibiting rheological characteristics was solved using the finite element method. Matrix formulation was derived by Galerkin's weighting residual method. The proposed FE procedure was encoded in a program. The presented formulation and program code were examined by using the analytical results of two simplified problems

a one layer clay soil exhibiting rheological characteristics and a double layer elastic clay soil. The comparison shows that the numerical results agree well with those of analytical results. A three layer clay soil exhibiting rheological characteristics was used to analyze influence of rheological characteristics and its parameter η 1 on different layers at different time. The results show that consolidation of clay exhibiting rheological characteristics is slower than that of clay exhibiting elastic characteristics. The phenomenon becomes more obvious over time and the distance between the clay and the pervious plane increases. Difference between the pore pressure dissipation of rheological clay and that of elastic clay reaches its climax when the consolidation degree of clay is in the range from 80% to 90%. Difference between the consolidation degree of rheological clay and that of elastic clay becomes larger and the influence time is earlier with higher creep parameter η 1.