<p>The vacuum preloading method, commonly used to enhance soft clay by boosting its load-bearing capacity and minimizing settlement, but is limited by clogging of vertical drains, the resource intensity of sand and membrane requirements. Hence, this research proposes a radial consolidation solution for vertical drains with vacuum preloading based on non-Darcy’s law. Two laboratory tests were analyzed with the proposed method. An analytical solution was developed to predict small-strain radial consolidation. It was assumed that the permeability decreases parabolically towards the prefabricated vertical drain, while the vacuum pressure decreases linearly with both depth and radius. The solution for non-Darcian consolidation degenerates to the Darcian flow solution when <i>m</i> (non-Darcian flow exponent) approaches 1. The results show that the non-Darcian model’s prediction of average excess pore water pressure dissipation alings well with the measured values. The research contributes to the field of geotechnical engineering, particularly in the area of soft soil improvement under the analytical solution of the non-Darcian model.</p>