Introducing Unsaturated Flow Phenomena into an Undergraduate Civil Engineering Curriculum

工程-土木（54）本提案的目的是通过介绍土壤中的非饱和流动现象，在科罗拉多矿业学院的本科土木工程教育中介绍土壤中的非饱和流动现象。该项目通过填补当前教科书与工程实践之间的差距来回应土木工程实践的迫切需要。在过去的二十年里，岩土工程，土木工程的一个子学科，经历了根本性的变化。传统的地基设计方法严格基于饱和条件下的土壤，现在在许多结构性地基问题中，如大坝的建设和运行，自然边坡稳定性和滑坡分析，地下垃圾箱，以及膨胀土对房屋和民用基础设施的损害，正在补充考虑非饱和土壤条件。因此，今天的岩土工程师必须在工程实践中处理非饱和条件下的土壤;一个通常被排除在许多正规本科教育课程之外的主题。此外，目前在美国本科阶段使用的所有土壤力学和实验教科书几乎没有涉及土壤中非饱和流动现象的材料。通过改编和实施两个说明土壤中非饱和流动现象的实验，将土壤中非饱和流动现象的基本概念纳入“土壤力学”和“土壤力学实验室”课程。这些实验包括用于量化土壤吸力头对含水量的依赖性的“土壤水吸力特性曲线测试”和用于量化土壤渗透性对含水量的依赖性的“渗透系数测试”。理解这两个实验的工作原理对于充分理解土壤中的非饱和流动以及将这些原理应用于结构基础设计和其他紧迫的岩土工程问题至关重要。

Engineering - Civil (54)The objective of this proposal is to introduce unsaturated flow phenomena in soils in undergraduate civil engineering education at the Colorado School of Mines by introducing unsaturated flow phenomena in soils. The project responds to a pressing need in civil engineering practice by filling the gap between current textbooks and engineering practice. Over the last two decades, geotechnical engineering, a sub-discipline of civil engineering, has experienced radical changes. Traditional foundation design methodology, which is based strictly on soils under saturated conditions, is now being supplemented with the considerations of unsaturated soil conditions in many structural foundation problems such as construction and operation of dams, natural slope stability and landslide analysis, underground waste containments, and expansive soil damages to houses and civil infrastructures. As a result, today's geotechnical engineers must deal with soils under unsaturated conditions in engineering practice; a subject typically excluded from many formal undergraduate education curricula. Furthermore, all soil mechanics and laboratory textbooks currently in use at the undergraduate level in the United States cover little, if any, material on unsaturated flow phenomena in soils. The fundamental concepts of unsaturated flow phenomena in soils are being incorporated into "Soil Mechanics" and "Soil Mechanics Laboratory" courses by adapting and implementing two experiments which illustrate unsaturated flow phenomena in soils. These experiments consist of "Soil Water- Suction Characteristic Curve Test" for quantifying dependency of soil suction head on water content, and "Coefficient of Permeability Test" for quantifying dependency of soil permeability on water content. Comprehension of the working principles for both experiments is critical for the full understanding of unsaturated flow in soils, and application of these principles to structural foundation design and other pressing geotechnical engineering problems.