Basic Geotechnical Engineering Skills - What Can Graduates Do?

[Mohammad Mominul Hoque]

Introduction:
This post is about what graduates can do, when leave the university and enter the construction industry. Please visit following link for original presentation - (https://www.issmge.org/education/recorded-webinars/basic-geotechnical-engineering-skills-what-can-graduates-do)

Following points may be drawn from the presentation:
A graduate engineer entering the construction industry should be able to do –

•   With a geologic map and memoir, some tubes of soil from the site, a pencil and paper produce safe and serviceable designs for simple foundations and slopes.
•   With simple input, basic tools, produce a reasonable design
•   Able to determine appropriate parameters and do basic analysis
•   Basic knowledge of geology, should be able to describe geologic history of a location
•   Concept of total stress, pore water pressure and effective stress
•   Must know whether total stress or effective stress analysis is relevant for design in hand
                   For typical construction (10 days to 3 years)
                   Sand and gravel=coarse=drained=effective stress analysis
                   Silt and clay=fine=undrained=total stress analysis + consolidation
•   Should be able to correctly select drained and undrained analysis
•   Should have knowledge about stress, stiffness and strain characteristics of soil
•   Graduate should be able to select a stiffness which is appropriate to the strain developed in the design
•   Should be able to select correct stress and stiffness for the analysis they are doing
•   Determine appropriate strength – peak, critical state, residual and able to relate stiffness to deformation.
•   Should be able to model the ground, what are the soils and rocks, where are they, what is the strength and stiffness, reasonable values of engineering properties (strength, stiffness, drainage)
•   It is prime required to evaluate parameters for design, strength and stiffness, measured in the laboratory or in-situ tests
•   Should be able to determine basic properties of a sample (unit weight and water content)
•   Can provide visual description and objective description of a soil sample (the grains and state)
•   Should be able to determine strength from objective description and estimate design parameters from soil description
•   Should able to design simple slope and foundation with pencil and paper, and know little about software
•   Should able to select critical design considerations and safety factors
•   Able to draw reasonable grading curves size curve, determine larger grain size, and proportion of visible and invisible grains
•   Description of the grains for visual portion and able to determine plasticity of invisible portion
•   Should be able to determine density and liquidity index of a sample
•   Able to manipulate undrained strength of a fine grained sample
•   Should be able to constructs simple flow nets, calculate flow rate and pore pressure anywhere in the flow net
•   Should know drained is more safer than undrainded, but settlement will be more, method of foundation design and basis criteria of foundation design is to limit movement
•   Graduates should be able to do simple calculations to find final settlement and how long will it takes?
•   Should be able to calculate limiting active and passive earth pressure on retaining walls, and selection of critical design parameters for design.

Summary:
"This is not all they should be able to do; but if they cannot do these, there is no point is asking them to do anything else."

Note:
This is not only applicable to any grade student but also teacher, in a sense what teacher have to ensure in the classroom? I do that believe that, ensuring all the basic skills in the classroom is equally applicable for other courses as well.

[milan]

Good writing!!