Consolidation of cohesive soils can be a very time consuming process. Where desirable, the consolidation can be expedited by installing vertical drains referred to as "wick drains". Wick drains work by promoting horizontal dissipation of excess pore pressures instead of vertical excess pore pressure flow in traditional 2D consolidation problems. In all cases, the soil has to be subjected to a surcharge in order for the wick drains to be effective. Hansbo (1979) has outlined a procedure to estimate consolidation times for wick drain assisted consolidation.

Wickdrains is a program that evaluates consolidation times and settlements for wick drain assisted consolidation due to a surcharge according to Hansbo (1979). The program also computes the required consolidation times for traditional 2D consolidation for single or double drainage conditions. Consolidation settlements are also calculated for both the recompression and the virgin compression zones. Only one soil layer can be specified.