Course title: Intermediate Soil Mechanics

Instructor: Jianye Ching (214B; jyching@ntu.edu.tw)

Textbook: Soil Mechanics Lambe and Whitman (1969)
Grading: 20% homework; 30~40% midterm; 40~50% final exam

Goal of this course:

This course aims to equip students with advanced knowledge on soil mechanics including topics on
soil properties, stress path, stress and strain behaviors of granular and clayey soils under drained,
undrained loadings and consolidation tests, etc.
Extra time will be spent on the subjects such as the mechanisms for shear strengths of sandy
soils, including dilation, interference and basic friction angles, and the mechanisms for undrained
shear strengths of clays, including the effect of stress state, stress history, and plasticity, etc.
Finally, the critical state model will be employed to interpret the aforementioned soil
behaviors.

Topics:
1. Composition of granular and cohesive soils and their index properties
2. Estimation of soil properties
3. Concept of stress path and stress paths for various tests
4. Consolidation behaviors of soils
5. Shear behaviors of granular soils mechanisms of friction angle
6. Shear behaviors of cohesive soils drained & undrained strengths and behaviors
7. Undrained shear strengths under various stress states
8. Critical state model interpretation of important soil behaviors

Textbook:
Lambe, T.W. and Whitman, R.V. (1969). Soil Mechanics. John Wiley & Sons, New York, USA.

References:
1. Holtz, R.D. and Kovacs, W.D. (1981). An Introduction to Geotechnical Engineering. Prentice-
Hall, Inc., New Jersy.
2. Kulhawy, F.H. and Mayne, P.W. (1990). Manual on Estimating Soil Properties for Foundation
Design. EL-6800 Final Report, Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA, USA.
http://www.epri.com/abstracts/Pages/ProductAbstract.aspx?ProductId=EL-6800
3. Atkinson, J.H. and Bransby, P.L. (1978). The Mechanics of Soils: An Introduction to Critical
State Soil Mechanics, McGraw-Hill, Inc., London, UK.
4. MIT OpenCourseWare: Advanced Soil Mechanics. http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/civil-and-
environmental-engineering/1-361-advanced-soil-mechanics-fall-2004/

Readings:
1. Skempton, A.W. (1961). Effective stress in soils, concrete and rocks. In: Pore Pressure and
Suction in Soils, vols. 4-16. Butterworths, London, pp. 4-16.
2. Bolton, M. D. (1986). The strength and dilatancy of sands. Geotechnique, 36(1), 65-78.
3. Rowe, P. W. (1962). The stress-dilatancy relation for static equilibrium of an assembly of
particles in contact. Proc. Roy. Soc., London, A269, 500-527.
4. Ladd, C.C. (1964). Stress-strain behavior of saturated clay and basic strength principles.
Research Report R64-17, Soil Mechanics Division, Dept. of Civil Engineering, MIT.
5. Ladd, C.C. and Foott, R. (1974). New design procedure for stability of soft clays. ASCE Journal
of the Geotechnical Engineering Division, 100(7), 763-786.