Principles of physical and structural geology; the influence of geological factors on engineering works and the environment. Field trip.

Geological and geophysical exploration for structures in rock; properties and behavior of rock masses; rock slope stability; geological engineering of underground openings; evaluation of rock foundations, including dams. No final examination.

Introduction to analysis of stress and strain and its application to fracture and deformation in rocks of all kinds. Applications in mining and civil engineering involving design of underground openings in competent, layered, and plastic rocks, slopes cut in jointed rock, and foundations on weak or fractured rocks.

Introduction to principles of groundwater flow, including steady and transient flow through porous media, numerical analysis, pumping tests, groundwater geology, contaminant transport, and design of waste containment systems.

Soil formation and identification. Engineering properties of soils. Fundamental aspects of soils, including soil mineralogy, soil-water movement, effective stress, consolidation, and soil strength. Geosynthetics and material interface properties. The use of soils and geosynthetics in geotechnical and geoenvironmental applications. Site investigation techniques. Laboratory testing and evaluation of soil composition and properties.

Waste generation and disposal; types and characterization of wastes, fate, and transportation of contaminants in soil; soil-water-contaminant interactions; engineering soil properties; use of earth and geosynthetic materials in waste containment applications; principles, design, and construction of linear and leachate collection systems; application to landfill design.

Principles of foundation engineering. Shear strength of soil. Theories related to and design of retaining structures, shallow foundations, deep foundations, and slope stability. The course has a design project that addresses each of the major topic areas in an integrated fashion.

The theory and practice of geophysical methods for determining the subsurface distribution of physical rock and soil properties. Measurements of gravity and magnetic fields, electrical and electromagnetic fields, and seismic velocity are interpreted to map the subsurface distribution of density, magnetic susceptibility, electrical conductivity, and mechanical properties. Also listed as Earth and Planetary Science C178.

A first course in pavement engineering for highways and airfields, including failure mechanisms, design approaches, new pavement and rehabilitation design, effects of materials and construction on pavement performance. Emphasis on understanding of fundamental issues of pavement engineering, approaches to evaluation and design for new pavements and maintenance and rehabilitation design, practical lab experience with asphalt concrete materials and tools used for evaluation and design of pavements, understanding of construction issues, and effects on pavement performance.

Graduate Courses

Mixture of mathematical theory and hands-on development of numerical skills. MATLAB is used as the computing environment for all coursework. Differential operators and GGO theorem; continuum transport equations; basics of volume averaging; dimensional and inspectional analysis; self-similarity and scaling; semi-analytic models of contaminant transport and data inversion; numerical approximations of boundary-value problems for the Convection-Dispersion-Absorption equation.

Advanced treatment of topics in soil mechanics, including state of stress, consolidation and settlement analysis, shear strength of cohesionless and cohesive soils, and slope stability analysis.

Develop understanding of wave propagation and signal processing needed to rationally interpret system transient response and evaluate properties of engineering materials. Topics include waves and vibrations, damping, filters--analog and digital, time vs. frequency domain analysis, spectral estimation--Fourier and Stochastic approaches, system identification.

Constitutive laws for geotechnical materials including inelastic hyperbolic and elasto-plastic Cam-clay; soil behavior and critical-state soil mechanics; application of the finite element method to static analysis of earth structures; the Discontinuous Deformation Analysis method.

Lectures and experimental studies of advanced aspects of soil property measurement with application to analysis and design. Consolidation testing by load control and Janbu's method, static and cyclic triaxial and simple shear testing under stress-and strain-control with pore pressure measurements, undisturbed sampling and sample handling, in-situ field testing, and related topics including advanced instrumentation, data acquisition, and measurement techniques.

Geotechnical practice in environmental protection and restoration. Methods of soil and site characterization for siting of waste repositories and site restoration. Influence of physical and chemical processes on the evaluation of contaminant distribution. Design of waste containment systems including landfills, slurry walls, and soil stabilization; the applicability and use of geosynthetics. Review of technologies for site restoration and cleanup.

Seismicity, influence of soil conditions on site response, seismic site response analysis, evaluation and modelling of dynamic soil properties, analysis of seismic soil-structure interaction, evaluation and mitigation of soil liquefaction and its consequences, seismic code provisions and practice, seismic earth pressures, seismic slope stability and deformation analysis, seismic safety of dams and embankments, seismic performance of pile foundations, and additional current topics.

Advanced treatment of topics in foundation engineering, including earth pressure theories, design of earth retaining structures, bearing capacity, ground improvement for foundation support, analysis and design of shallow and deep foundations.

Influence of geologic origin and history on the engineering characteristics of soils and rocks. Application of geology in exploration, design, and construction of engineering works.

This course gives an overview of seismic methods used to image the subsurface. Reflection, refraction, and borehole methods are introduced. Acquisition, processing, and interpretation of seismic data as discussed with application to petroleum production, environmental site characterization and groundwater problems.

The physical basis of gravity and magnetic surveying. Reduction of gravity and magnetic data. Theoretical anomalies of common models; estimation of parameters of disturbing bodies; spectral analysis; design of filters for derivatives, continuation, and fields reduced to the pole.

Broad coverage of the geological and geotechnical applications of ground and airborne electromagnetic induction methods of geophysical exploration. Theoretical and laboratory models of exploration targets. Instrumentation. Exploration methods and procedures. Data interpretation. Illustrative examples drawn from surveys related to problems in archaeology, environmental contamination, geohydrology, coastal engineering, mineral and petroleum exploration.

Theory of dc current flow in isotropic, layered, and inhomogeneous earth models with emphasis on the design and interpretation of field measurement systems. Mechanisms of electric current flow in porous media, induced polarization, and coupled flow phenomena.

Considerations for digital signal processing and data analysis. Fourier Transforms, convolution and correlation. Discrete linear systems, Z tranforms. Digital processing of seismic reflection data, deconvolution and migration. Introduction to 3-D seismic data.

Recent applications or research in geological engineering and rock mechanics. Topics vary each term.

Advanced treatment of developing areas of geomechanics and geotechnical earthquake engineering, including the development of generalized nonlinear soil constitutive models, new developments in soil dynamics and geotechnical earthquake engineering, soil improvement, geosynthetics and earth structures, and case studies of geotechnical problems.

Theory of electric and low frequency electromagnetic fields in inhomogeneous conductive media. Fundamental properties of fields above, on, and within layered media for plane wave, line, and dipole source fields. Time and frequency domain solutions with finite difference, finite element, and integral equation techniques. Inversion and imaging of electrical conductivity. Course will emphasize recent developments and new research directions. FORTRAN or C required.

Active areas of research in applied seismology. Subjects include: anisotropic and viscoelastic wave propagation, borehole seismology, crosswell seismology, including crosswell seismic tomography, vertical seismic profiling, reservoir monitoring including passive seismic methods.

Students will receive no credit for Material Science and Engineering 180 taken prior to Fall 2001. Three hours of lecture per week. We follow the process of discovering and evaluating an oilfield. Weekly topics include seismic survey, design, drilling, and completing a discovery well; logging, testing, delineation of the reservoir, estimation of reserves, production planning, and economic analysis. Extensive use is made of computer simulation.