Ground versus Soil: A New Paradigm in GE Education
M. R. Madhav1; S.V. Abhishek2
1 J.N.T. University, Hyderabad; 2 Purdue University
Resumo
Some of the practitioners of geotechnical engineering tend to confuse Ground with Soil. It is not just semantics but the terms have deeper technical and philosophical implications. Soil is a material which can be handled, felt, seen, smelt, tasted and tested in small to medium size samples while 'Ground' is an entity that exists at site or as we refer to as "in situ". Just as the adage 'The total is more than the sum of the individual parts', predicting the behavior of the ground from the so called 'properties' measured on samples collected from the field is much more complex and involves 'judgment'. Ground is an entity very similar to 'Humans'. Both 'Humans' and 'Ground' are complex natural entities and exhibit behavioral responses rather than possess properties like other engineering materials. Humans have organs and traits such as being jovial, sad, friendly, angry, misanthropic, etc. but do not have properties. Their behavioral responses depend on genetics, environment in which they grow, personality they develop and to impetus they experience. The states in which humans exist can vary depending on the circumstances. The genetics of ground is obviously defined by their formation. Thus it can be alluvial, marine, residual, colluvial, aeolin, etc. depending upon how physiogamy forms the deposit. The weather, or more broadly the climate could alter its characteristics in the post-depositional state. Ground is continually affected by hydrological, tectonic and other atmospheric effects. Ground one tends to believe as a solid ground on which several engineering structures are built becomes suddenly a fluid under specific mitigating circumstances such as being loose saturated sand with small amount of fines but subjected to seismic activity of medium and to high intensity. Or a river in flood can erode the ground by removing the particles by its high velocity and we get 'scour'. Slope on which several civilizations thrived becomes unstable and even disastrous because of high intensity rain, a natural phenomenon c
Palavras-chave: ground; paradigm; genetics; judgment