Università Roma Tre

1 – REMARKS ON THE MECHANICAL BEHAVIOUR OF SOILS
• Model of saturated porous medium.
• Total and effective stresses, stress path, pre-consolidation and yielding stress.
• Drained and undrained conditions.
• Stress-strain response and stiffness properties of a soil element.
• Elastic and plastic strain, critical state model.

2 – GENERAL ASPECTS OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF GEOTECHNICAL STRUCTURES
• Serviceability and failure limit conditions.
• Stresses in soil from surface loads.
• Methods for settlement predictions of fine and coarse grained soils.
• Seepage analysis.
• Consolidation theory and analysis of time-dependent deformation.

3 - INTRODUCTION TO FOUNDATION ENGINEERING
• Introduction to foundation design.
• Different types of shallow foundations.
• Bearing capacity and settlement of shallow foundations.
• Failure modes, eccentric loads.
• Methods for settlement prediction of fine- and coarse-grained soils.
• Short and long-term situations, time evolution of settlements.
• One-dimensional consolidation and more general conditions.
• Pile foundations.
• Types of piles and installations.
• Load capacity of single piles.
• Pile groups and piled raft.
• Laterally loaded piles.

4 – EARTH RETAINING STRUCTURES
• Basic concepts on lateral earth pressure.
• Rigid and flexible earth retaining structures.
• Types of retaining walls and modes of failure.
• Sheet piles walls.
• Cantilever and anchored sheet piles walls.

5 – SLOPE STABILITY
• Instability phenomena typical of soil and rock slopes.
• Strength properties of rocks and discontinuities of rock mass.
• Influence of groundwater regime and seismic actions.
• Stability analysis by limit equilibrium methods.
• Planar and rotational slides, methods of wedges and of slices.
• Stabilization and protection works, monitoring systems.

6 – INTRODUCTION TO GEOTECHNICAL EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING
• Dynamic soil properties.
• Ground response analysis and dynamic soil-structure interaction.
• Design for seismic-resistant geotechnical systems.

English text books:
- Geotechnical engineering – Lancellotta, Ed. Balkema
- Foundation analysis and design - Bowles, Ed. McGraw-Hill