Advanced Soil Mechanics

The course follows the undergraduate course 'Geotechnics' or 'Geotechnical Engineering' to broaden the fundamental concepts for graduate students. It provides the foundation for advanced geotechnical topics such as critical state soil mechanics (one soil mechanical theory), finite element simulation of geotechnical engineering, geoenvironmental engineering, foundation engineering, and others. It deepens the understanding of topics such as soil classification, shear strength of soils, and stress and strain state analysis, etc. which have been briefly introduced in the bachelor level course. Besides, some new topics such as soil elasticity, general soil mechanical behaviors, soil plasticity, and the concept of constitutive modeling will also be introduced in this course.

BYGG2200 Geotechnics or equivalent

After completing this course, the student will gain the following knowledge, skills, and general competence:

Knowledge

Students have in-depth knowledge of:

• soil aggregate, plasticity, and classification
• soil mechanical behavior: elasticity, plasticity, and shear strength
• effective stress and pore water pressure development due to loading
• stress path
• clay sensitivity and anisotropy
• concepts of constitutive modeling and soil state parameters
• cyclic loading properties

Skills

Students:

• can understand index properties of fine-grained and coarse-grained soils and perform soil classification
• can interpret soil parameters from various types of experimental tests
• have a fundamental understanding of stress and strain states and general mechanical behaviors of soils
• can apply soil elastic plasticity theory and concept of constitutive modelling

General competence

Students have:

• a solid understanding of general soil mechanical behaviors under various loading conditions
• a good understanding of typical geotechnical parameters and application to engineering design
• some simple form practice (for example in Excel) to use elastic-plasticity theory to simulate soil behaviours

Lectures, exercises and projects

Online lectures will be recorded, and the material will be made available to students on CANVAS.

The following coursework requirements should be completed and approved in order for the student to take the exam:

Three written homework assignments

The exam consists of two parts:

1) Written group project report, weighted 50%,

2) Oral group presentation of the project following by individual Q&A, weighted 50%.

The assessment is in the form of group evaluation with 2-4 students in each group. The project report is approximately 5000 words. The oral presentation should be within 15-20 minutes followed by individual Q&A sessions of 5-10 minutes each.

All assessment parts must be awarded a pass grade (E or better) for the student to pass the course.

Assessment part 1) can be appealed. Assessment part 2) cannot be appealed.

All types of materials and equipment are allowed.

Grade scale A-F

1) One internal examiner

2) Two internal examiners

External examiners are used regularly

Chuangxin Lyu