Abstract：The highly contained silts are found in the entrance of weak-tide terrestrial facies of the Yellow River，and eighty percent sediments are rapidly deposited at Yellow River Estuary. The consolidation process of such sediments is not clear at present. A series of experiments have been conducted on the tide flat of Diaokou delta-lobe that lies in the north of Yellow River Delta，which can provide a more realistic simulation than the laboratory methods. In order to reveal the consolidation process of rapidly deposited silts，the fluid sediments imitating the rapidly deposited seabed silts at the Yellow River Estuary have been made in field；and the fluid sediments are promptly filled into a one-meter deep testing pit excavated at the tide flat. By field testing methods，such as static cone penetration test，field vane shear test and pore water piezometer test，the variation strength and dissipation of pore water pressure of rapidly deposited seabed silts have been measured at real time. It is shown from the experimental data that the consolidation speed of the rapidly deposited seabed silts measured by water piezometer at Yellow River Estuary in field is much quicker than the speed calculated through the Terzaghi¢s one-dimensional consolidation theory. It is also shown that，after consolidation compression is completed，the strengths of such silts still increase gradually along with the development of time，showing an ununiformity increase along the depth. Thus the rapidly deposited silts have taken on a quasi-overconsolidated state，which is similar to undisturbed soils of Yellow River Estuary. The analyses show that the formation of such quasi- overconsolidated state is attributable to the influence of the cementation effect and sedimentary environment.
