SOIL MECHANICS (QUIZ 1)

Soil Mechanics

Terzaghi: The application of the laws of mechanics and hydraulics to engineering problems dealing with sediments and other unconsolidated accumulations of solid particles produced by the mechanical and chemical disintegration of rocks regardless of whether or not they contain an admixture of organic constituents.

Soil Mechanics

The discipline of engineering science which deals with the properties and behavior of soil as structural material.

Soil

The unconsolidated sediments and deposits of solid particles that have resulted from disintegration of rocks; the oldest and most complex engineering materials.

Vitruvius

The Roman engineer who served during the reign of Emperor Augustus in the first century B.C. and paid great attention to soil types and to the design and construction of solid foundations.

Charles-Augustin de Coulomb

The member of the French Royal Engineers credited as the first person too use mechanics to solve soil problems (1773) and who formulated the Classical Earth Pressure Theory in 1776.

Coulomb’s failure wedge

The soil wedge postulated by Coulomb that would fail along a slip plane and push a fortress wall out or topple it over.

Karl Terzaghi

The undisputed father of soil mechanics whose book Erdbaumechanik published in 1925 laid the foundation for soil mechanics.

Geotechnique, geotechnics, geomechanics

Alternative terms generally used to designate the application of engineering mechanics to the solution of problems dealing with soil as a foundation and as a construction material.

Geotechnical Engineering

The broader engineering field involving the application of soil mechanics, geology, and hydraulics to the analysis and design of geotechnical systems.

Stability and economy

Two fundamental tenets of engineering design that must be balanced in geotechnical engineering.