CIV4501   Advanced Geotechnics   (15 credits)

Description

The module will provide students with a greater understanding of 'modelling' in geotechnical engineering, applied to the analysis and design of large scale geotechnical structures and systems, such as embankment dams, levees and tunnels. This will critically extend to the interpretation, analysis and forensic review of both successively implemented and failed geotechnical systems. Aspects of uncertainty and risk will be developed related to ultimate and serviceability limit states, using a range of historical case histories within the published literature. Investigative analysis will be conducted in the context of a student project that is focused on forensic analysis of failure, benefiting from data from the literature and numerical modelling. This will be complemented by a consideration of soil having a particulate / continuum duality, and by an examination of the role of physical modelling (such as using a geotechnical centrifuge), analytical models, constitutive models, and the geological model.

Reading List