Advancement of Unsaturated Soils Theory into the Undergraduate Civil Engineering Curriculum

我们的大部分物理基础设施是建立在非饱和土，但由于技术和历史的原因，教育工作者继续保留非饱和土力学的教学研究生水平的课程。每年有数十亿美元的资金因对水分敏感的土壤对基础设施的破坏而面临风险。在另一个极端，由于过于保守的结构是基于饱和土壤性质的假设设计的，每年浪费数十亿美元。提高学生对非饱和土壤行为的理解可以在公共和私营部门节省大量成本。此外，最近的一项调查表明，大多数的岩土教师认为，非饱和土力学应在本科阶段引入。通过引入非饱和条件下的岩土工程原理，学生对土壤作为工程材料的理解深度将大大提高，饱和土壤案例将作为更广泛理论的一个子集。 该项目涉及开发以学生为中心的讲座和实验室模块的非饱和土理论的基本原则和这些原则的应用问题的移动结构基础系统。这些模块强调解决湿陷性和膨胀性土壤的地质灾害问题。在能源部门新兴的岩土工程挑战被用作额外的激励的例子。这些模块正在七所大学的学生中进行试点测试，有大量不同的学生，以确保这些模块不偏向于特定的学生群体。

Most of our physical infrastructure is built on unsaturated soils, yet for both technical and historical reasons, educators continue to reserve the teaching of unsaturated soil mechanics to the graduate level curriculum. Billions of dollars are at risk annually from moisture-sensitive soil damage to infrastructure. At the other extreme, billions of dollars are wasted annually due to overly conservative structures that are designed based on an assumption of saturated soil properties. Improving student understanding of unsaturated soil behavior could result in large cost savings in both the public and private sectors. In addition, a recent survey indicates that a majority of geotechnical faculty think that unsaturated soils mechanics should be introduced at the undergraduate level. Students' depth of understanding of soils as an engineering material would be greatly enhanced via introduction of geotechnical principles for unsaturated conditions, with the saturated soil case being presented as a subset of the broader theory. This project involves developing student-centered lecture and laboratory modules on the basic principles of unsaturated soils theory and the application of these principles to problems of movement of structural foundation systems. The modules emphasize solving geo-hazard problems of collapsible and expansive soils. Emerging geotechnical challenges in the energy sector are used as additional motivational examples. These modules are being pilot-tested on students at seven universities, with a large and diverse set of students to ensure that the modules are not biased toward a particular subset of students.