Developing soft soil engineering skills using “class b” and “class c” predictions

Paper in proceeding, 2020

The calculation of one-dimensional consolidation settlement is a classic geotechnical problem that involves many steps with associated judgement. To give students an opportunity to develop soft-soil engineering skills, we developed a coursework assignment with “Class B” and “Class C” type of predictions of a test embankment on soft clay, starting from real data. “Class B” predictions allow students to deal with uncertainty in input data, while “Class C” predictions enable the students to appreciate the main sources for errors in their analyses. In this paper, we describe the assignment, and the changes made over the course of three years. Furthermore, we analyse the results for selected student cohorts and compare them with the predictions by professionals. The results show that accurate consolidation analysis is not trivial. It is encouraging though that many of the students performed as well as the professionals.