Alert soil mechanics instructors of the main unsaturated soil issues: what and how to teach when experts disagree
Alert soil mechanics instructors of the main unsaturated soil issues: what and how to teach when experts disagree
The team project described in this paper is a brainchild of technical committee TC106 on Unsaturated Soils, which has been advocating for years the teaching of unsaturated soil mechanics, and technical committee TC306 on Geo- engineering education, which learned in 2020 about a technical disagreement within the unsaturated soils community. The 8th International Conference on Unsaturated Soils (UNSAT 2023) was an opportunity for the two committees to collaborate on tackling together the specific issue of teaching unsaturated soil mechanics and the broader issue of expert disagreement. Understanding the nature of the disagreement was attempted mainly by having specialists answer a list of questions phrased by the non-specialist first author after having been tutored by the last author, also a specialist. The answers revealed a significant disagreement on the variables selected to describe the behavior of unsaturated soils. Until the disagreement is satisfactorily settled within the unsaturated soils community, interim solutions are proposed for instruction.
Marina Pantazidou; S. L. Houston; John McCartney; A. Tarantino; Michael Bardanis
18th European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ECSMGE2024)
A - New developments on structural design
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