精东传媒app

Soil and rock have been used as construction materials since the start of human civilization. This course provides a basic introduction to geology and soil mechanics. This enables identifications of minerals and rocks and their structural properties as well as interpretation of geological maps. In addition, this course extends the capabilities of students to understand soil properties for Engineering purposes such as its origin, grain-size distribution, ability to drain water and compressibility. Upon completion of this course, students will have practical understanding of the Engineering geology and soil mechanics.

Soil and rock are the foundations of all land-based structures. Therefore, it is imperative to understand the range of techniques available for both identifying these materials and for determining their physical and mechanical properties. The course introduces both geology and soil mechanics. Geological information affects engineering decisions in the design and planning stages because all large-scale engineering works have their foundations in rock or soil. Many projects, such as dam walls and pavements are also built from these materials. A working knowledge of geologically applied design limitations is therefore required by all engineers involved in foundation works. Students will also be introduced to the basic concepts of soil mechanics that are widely used in the design of geotechnical engineering problems such as flow nets, soil consolidation and settlement of structures. The emphasis throughout the course is placed on a practical understanding of these topics.

The course objectives define the student learning outcomes for a course. On completion of this course students should be able to:

1. examine and categorise a limited group of minerals and hand specimens of rocks;
2. distinguish structural properties of rocks such as faults, folds and joints, and interpret their relevance for engineering and soil formation processes;
3. interpret geological maps and understand the fundamental procedures of site investigation, relating such information to engineering;
4. understand the basic characteristics of soils such as soil physics, soil compaction, soil chemistry, soil plasticity, particle size distribution and soil classification;
5. explain the concept of effective and total stresses in saturated soils;
6. apply Darcy's Law to simple soil structures and find permeability characteristics from the provided test data; employ the procedures involved in constructing flow nets to solve specific problems;
7. use available methods to estimate elastic stress changes in soil and calculate elastic settlement under a variety of external loading systems;
8. calculate the consolidation settlement under a single footing using the concept of one dimensional consolidation theory.