Graduate

Overview of basic soil mechanics: Classification of soils, compaction, 1D flow, stresses, 2D flow, consolidation, strength, lateral earth pressure theories. Introduction to advanced soil mechanics: Advances in soil classification, Intelligent Compaction, Flow in anisotropic soil profiles, finite difference method for modelling flow in soils, Mathematical concepts and relationships for defining and characterizing granular media. Definition and physical meaning of tensors, principal stresses, strains, and their invariants. Continuum mechanics notation. Particle-continuum duality. Introduction to unsaturated soil mechanics. Characteristics of soils such as stiffness, dilatancy, and strength. Definition of soil failure surfaces. Finite difference method for modelling consolidation. Theoretical introduction to constitutive modelling, physical modelling, theoretical modeling, numerical modeling, upper bound, lower bound, slip lines.