Soil Mechanics

Syllabus

1. Introduction (6 hours)
   1. Historical development of soil mechanics
   2. Scope and application of soil mechanics
   3. Soil formation and soil types
   4. Soil structures and clay minerals
2. Phase Relationship, Index Property and Soil Classification (12 hours)
   1. Basic definitions
   2. Phase relationships: Volume-volume, mass-volume, weight-volume and mass-mass relationships
   3. Soil index properties: Index properties of coarse and fine grained soils
   4. Soil classification systems (MIT, USCS, IS, BS)
   5. Field identification of soil
3. Soil Water, Permeability and Seepage Analysis (8 hours)
   1. Soil water and capillarity
   2. Soil permeability (Darcy's law and its validity)
   3. Factors affecting soil permeability
   4. Permeability in stratified soil
   5. Two dimensional flow (Laplace equation)
   6. Flow net construction and applications
   7. Seepage through earthen dams
   8. Seepage through anisotropic soil
   9. Piping failure and mitigation measures
4. Soil Stresses (8 hours)
   1. Effective stress principle
   2. Hydrostatic and one dimensional flow conditions
   3. Quick sand conditions
   4. Boussinesq's and Westergaard's solutions
   5. Newmark's influence chart
   6. Equivalent point load and stress distribution
5. Consolidation (8 hours)
   1. Consolidation process (Spring analogy)
   2. One-dimensional consolidation theory
   3. Oedometer test analysis
   4. Secondary consolidation
   5. Normally and over consolidated clay
   6. Settlement calculation
   7. Accelerating consolidation methods
6. Shear Strength (12 hours)
   1. Mohr circle and Mohr-Coulomb failure theory
   2. Direct shear test, uniaxial compression, triaxial compression, vane shear test
   3. Factors affecting shear strength
   4. Cyclic shear strength and cyclic triaxial tests
   5. Critical state framework
7. Soil Compaction (6 hours)
   1. Importance of soil compaction
   2. Compaction tests (Standard and modified Proctor)
   3. Factors affecting compaction
   4. Structure and behavior of compacted soils
   5. Compaction specification and field control

Practicals

1. Moisture content determination
2. Field density
3. Sieve analysis
4. Atterberg limits
5. Permeability
6. Consolidation
7. Direct shear
8. Unconfined compression
9. Triaxial testing
10. Compaction