Environmental Geotechnology: Geotechnics: Introduction to Geotechnical Engineering

This course presents the basic principles and the underlying assumptions, and explanations of the theories behind geotechnical analyses, together with discussions of the sources and magnitudes of uncertainties in geotechnical analyses. Application of principles to practical problems, emphasizing the role of Geotechnology in real design projects using example problems to illustrate the various analyses presented.
An introduction to geoenvironmental engineering as well as consideration of earth slopes, landslides, and related issues will be presented, together with discussions of recent developments in geotechnical engineering, including geosynthetics, soil improvement, and geotechnical earthquake engineering.  Frequent use of both English and SI units will be made, because engineers in North America and many other parts of the world need to be conversant in both systems.

The course integrates computer software into the learning process. Throughout, students will first learn how to do each analysis by hand. Once the students understand the concepts, they will be introduced to the applicable software routines to allow them to explore more complex problems without being burdened by tedious computations. To avoid a false sense of accuracy, frequent references to sources of uncertainties in geotechnical analyses will be made to help students understand that geotechnical engineering is not a precise science.