Advanced Geotechnical Engineering

Code of Behaviour and Academic Integrity

All students are expected to be familiar with the University’s codes, policies, and procedures including but
not limited to the Student Code of Conduct, Campus Drug and Alcohol Policy, Copyright Policy, Disability
and Impairment Policy, and Equity and Diversity Policy. It is the responsibility of each student to be familiar
with the definitions, policies and procedures concerning academic misconduct/dishonest behaviour. More
information on UC’s policies and academic integrity can be found in the undergraduate handbook as well as
at: https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/about-uc/corporate-information/policies
https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/about-uc/what-we-do/teaching/academic-integrity

Generative AI use in this course

It is not practical to regulate the use of Generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT) for internal assessments on this course – weekly homework and quiz assignments. Students are allowed to use these tools in whichever manner they see fit. However, you should be aware of the risks, which are described below.

Research clearly shows that the unrestricted use of ChatGPT by students during mathematical education leads to decreased performance on external assessment (which happens to comprise most of your grade in this course). For instance, this study showed a 17% reduction in test performance, more than three grade points.

The primary mechanisms leading to adverse outcomes appear to be (1) shallow learning, where AI prevents you spending sufficient time with the material to obtain a deep understanding of it, and (2) AI dependency, where overuse of the tool leads to an inability to apply methods or think critically once it is taken away.

If you intend to use Generative AI on this course, consider prompting with some basic guardrails to prevent the above impacts on your learning:

“You are a math tutor helping me with a homework problem. Please suggest one (and only one) next step for me to consider on the following problem. Don’t complete the problem for me. **paste your problem**.”
“You are a coding tutor helping me with a homework problem. Here is some code I have written and the error that I am getting. Please give me some hints about how I can fix this. Do not give me the corrected code though. **paste your code and error message**.”

Even with the guardrails, a helpful Generative AI will frequently just give you the solution to a problem, cheating you of the opportunity to learn it yourself.

Emergency provisions: In the case of an emergency that affects the whole course, the Course Coordinator, in consultation with the Dean, may change the nature, weighting and timing of assessments, e.g. tests and examination may be replaced with assignments of the same weight or different weight at a different time and/or date (which, under certain circumstances, may be outside the prescribed course dates).  The ‘Special consideration’ process will also be used for unforeseen circumstances that adversely affect the academic performance of students individually. The usual grounds for this are described in the UC policy ‘Special Consideration Procedures and Guidelines’, and personal circumstances due to a wider emergency event may also qualify.

Special Consideration for Assignments

An extension will be granted for evidence-supported requests. Extensions will typically be for up to one week, but the duration will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Students seeking an extension must contact the course coordinator as soon as possible with evidence of their situation, and preferably before the due date. An extension will not be granted over the study week period.

Special Consideration for Final Exam

The academic remedy for a special consideration assessed at a moderate level or higher is an equivalent exam.
The alternative exam will be held on campus during the week of July 7th. The mark on the alternative exam
will replace the original exam mark in the course grade calculation unless a student declines or does not
respond to the offer of the alternative exam, in which case the original mark will be used. Students will not be
advised of their original mark as part of this process. All communication associated with special considerations
will be conducted using official UC email accounts. The offer to sit an alternative assessment will come with
a date and time. Students will have a clearly specified amount of time to respond to the offer. Failure to respond
in the specified time frame will be interpreted as a declined offer. If a student has applied for special
consideration but the application has not yet been approved, they may be permitted to sit the alternative exam,
but the mark will not be applied until the special consideration application has been approved.

The course consists of three distinct parts: (1) Stress-strain behaviour of soils; (2) Soil and site characterization; (3) Analysis and design of foundations. All topics are discussed in the context of geotechnical analysis and design. Further details on the content are provided below.

(1) Stress-strain behaviour of soils under monotonic loading
- Principles and devices for soil testing in the laboratory
- Characteristics of drained/undrained stress-strain relationships of soils under monotonic loading
- State concept interpretation of soil behaviour under monotonic loading

(2) Cyclic behaviour of soils and soil liquefaction
- Cyclic behaviour of saturated sand
- Liquefaction phenomenon
- Impacts of liquefaction on land and structures

(3) Modelling soil behaviour using results from laboratory and in-situ tests
- Strength and stiffness of soils in geotechnical calculations
- General modelling approaches in geotechnical analysis and design (an example of physical modelling)
- Hyperbolic model for shear stress – shear strain relationships of soils
- Use of Cone Penetration Test (CPT) for soil and site characterization
- Development of design soil profile for geotechnical analysis

(4) Shallow foundations
- Bearing capacity calculations
- Settlement calculations
- Geotechnical design of spread footings and mat foundations
- Working stress design vs. limit state design methods
- Structural design of footings
- Large foundations: rafts and piled rafts

(5) Piles under axial loading
- Philosophy of deep foundations (load transfer mechanism)
- Pile under axial loading: elastic analysis
- Settlement of single piles: evaluation using design charts
- Settlement of pile groups: evaluation by simplified design approaches
- Estimating axial capacity

(5) Piles under lateral loading
- Elastic analysis (closed-form solution)
- Simplified pseudo-static analysis using beam-spring model (numerical analysis)
- Modelling nonlinear soil-pile behaviour