Why and how critical state soil mechanics should be included in introductory undergraduate courses in soil mechanics
David Airey AIREY1; Guien Miao1
1 University of Sydney
Resumo
There has been some recent discussion (Santamarina, 2015) on the teaching of soil mechanics and what topics should be kept and which discarded. One of the issues raised was whether critical state soil mechanics should have a place in an undergraduate education. In this paper I will make the case that CSSM, or at least the basics of it, is essential to the understanding of soil mechanics and should be a non-negotiable part of introductory soil mechanics. The paper will also discuss how to introduce the topic. Key points covered will include: the existence of a critical state line and how this explains volume change behaviour; the importance of stress path; the ability of CSSM to explain in a coherent fashion drained and undrained strength, and where c' comes from, and finally its ability to explain the sometimes large differences between drained and undrained stability calculations. A second part of this discussion is what topics should be included in courses introducing soil mechanics. This to some extent will depend on the structure of the program. The paper is based on an assumption that the course is part of a program for civil engineers and that there is only a single course in soil mechanics. The majority of the students will not be proceeding to majors in soil mechanics but need to understand the fundamental mechanics that underlie geotechnical engineering, many of which are relevant to (civil) engineering more generally. The suggested list of topics to be covered include: soil as an engineering material, effective stress, water flow through soil, solid mechanics (elastic solutions for stresses and settlements), soil compression, consolidation, strength and soil stability. Critical state soil mechanics provides the link between the last 4 topics and this link needs to be made explicit to the students. The paper will present some simple exercises that can be used to encourage the students to grapple with the concept of the critical state line. Critical state soil mechanics is the starting point for any c
Palavras-chave: Critical States; Strength; Undergraduate education