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Welcome to the research guide for CE 472 - Advanced Soil Mechanics! On this page you'll find advice and links to great sources of information for your CE 472 research paper, including places to look for general background information or popular news reporting on your topic, links to our various search tools for books and ebooks, and suggestions for the best databases to use for this assignment.
Students will extend what they learned in Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering and design advanced foundations in this course. Topics covered are: slope stability, field testing, field instrumentation, designing braced excavations, designing piles and drilled shafts, designing flexible walls, designing earth retaining structures, and designing earth structures using geosynthetics.Assignments include one research paper on a soil-related engineering problem.
When searching for background information or news reporting on a typical topic for this course (a dam or bridge failure; foundation conditions for buildings; the influence of soil conditions on human activities), start by searching for keywords related to your topic in Scout. Books, ebooks, newspaper articles, and journal articles found using these search tools will provide background information and an introduction to your topic.
Once you've acquired background information on your topic - important names, dates, events - it's time to turn to subject-specific databases in order to find detailed scholarly articles that provide a more in-depth and focused analysis of your research paper topic. Below are links to databases that include articles which examine soil characteristics, foundation design, construction practices, and forensic analysis.
