Abstract: Thermal drainage consolidation method,a new type of foundation reinforcement method can accelerate consolidation rate.However,in the process of soft soil consolidation,the thermal resistance effect will reduce the heat transfer rate.A generalized imperfect thermal contact model is proposed to predict the thermal contact resistance at the interface of multi-layered saturated soils.Based on the coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical theory,the computational model is established for the thermal consolidation of multi-layered saturated soils subjected to time-dependent thermal load.The corresponding semi-analytical solutions of temperature increment,excess pore water pressure and displacement are obtained through Laplace transform method.On basis of this,the characteristics of thermal consolidation of multi-layered saturated soils are investigated under four different thermal contact models,and the influences of contact transfer coefficient and partition coefficient on the thermal consolidation are discussed.It is demonstrated that as considering the thermal contact resistance,there is a jump of temperature increment at the interface,and the excess pore water pressure near the interface in the first layer becomes larger while the displacement is smaller when compared to those of the perfect thermal contact model.The proposed model will provide a theoretical basis for application of the thermal consolidation technique in the ground improvement.