Department: Civil Engineering

Number: CE 5320
Title: Advanced Geotechnical Engineering

Catalog Description: Advanced treatment of topics in geotechnical engineering, including the

engineering response to loading, soil properties, earth pressure, shear strength, soil compaction
and fabric, soil hydraulics, and consolidation, and settlement analysis.

Prerequisites: CE 4348 and Permission of instructor

Textbook:
Advanced Soil Mechanics, by Braja M. Das, 1997, Taylor & Francis Publishers

Geotechnical Engineering Principles and Practices, by Donald P. Coduto, 1998,

Prentice Hall Publishers

Soil Mechanics in Engineering Practice, by Terzaghi, Peck and Mesri, 3rd Edition, John
Wiley & Sons.

Course Objectives: The objective of this course is that students will gain in-depth understanding of
soil mechanics to apply in day-to-day geotechnical engineering. To achieve this objective, the course
is divided into four equally important topics. First, students are exposed to issues with cut and fill
for leveling purposes. Secondly, students are exposed to shear strength of soils. This part of the
course gives student an adequate background in determining the strength parameters of cohesive and
cohesionless soils, and provides solid knowledge to face challenging problems that you may
encounter in actual practice. The concept is relatively simple but its importance is quite significant.
The third part of the course deals with volume change behavior of the soil (settlement). In this part,
general relationships between soil type, pressure, and void ratio and factors controlling resistance to
volume changes are discussed. In addition, the immediate and consolidation settlement are also
discussed. At the end of the course, students are exposed to stability of natural slopes as well as
excavations. The short-term and long-term stability is also considered. Different methods used for
determining the safety factors associated with natural and man-made slopes are introduced.

Specifically student will develop the following skills (the CE program outcomes addressed by each
objective are given in parentheses):

Students will be able to use advanced concepts of mathematics, science and engineering to identify
issues with soil used as a foundation or slopes. (1)
Student will be able to apply soil mechanics tools to design stable slopes. (2)
Students will be able to work in teams by performing projects and will be able to write technical
report and present their study professionally. (3)
Students will learn the various aspects of geotechnical engineering and be able to conduct
independent work (4)
Topics covered:

1.0 Compactability of Soil

2.0 Cut and Fill Requirements
3.0 Shear Strength of Cohesive Soil
4.0 Shear Strength of Cohesionless Soil
5.0 Consolidation and Settlement Analysis
6.0 Slope Stability Concepts
7.0 Soil Stabilization Concepts

Class/Laboratory Schedule

Class: MW 6:00 to 7:20 PM

Contribution of course to meeting the professional component: The course contributes

towards engineering design appropriate to the civil engineering field.

Prepared by: Dr. Vivek Tandon

Date: May 11, 2005