CE 804 - Advanced Mechanics for Civil Infrastructure

Course Goals and Objectives

You will learn to analyze structural systems encountered in civil infrastructure (structures, pavements, materials, geotechnical) applications. More specifically, you will:

• Learn or reinforce your knowledge of the stiffness method of analysis
• Reinforce your knowledge of the mechanics of materials and the relations between displacements, strains and stresses
• Learn about energy concepts in solid mechanics
• Learn about interpolation functions for displacement fields
• Understand the assumptions, limitations and pitfalls of the finite element method
• Use a general purpose finite element computer program

Most of the course deals with application of the finite element method to problems in the infrastructure area. Some time will also be devoted to other useful methods in stress analysis. This course is essential for understanding the assumptions, limitations and pitfalls of the finite element method. It provides the fundamental concepts required to intelligently use finite element based computer programs for infrastructure applications.

Performance Evaluation and Expectations

Your performance in the course will be evaluated based on the following components::

• Homework collectively worth 25% of the grade
• A term project worth 25% of the grade
• A mid-term exam worth 20% of the grade
• A final exam worth 30% of the grade to be held on Thursday, December 13th from 3:00-5:00 p.m.

Homework, exams and individual term projects must be done independently. You may consult others regarding homework and term projects, but must complete the work by yourself. Consultations are not permitted for exams. Evidence of cheating will result in a score of zero for all those involved.

Two measures are used to assign final grades. The first is your overall raw percentage score which measures your absolute performance, and the second is an overall standardized T-score which measures your relative performance in the class. T-scores are calculated for each exam and homework using

and the overall T-score is computed by weighting each individual T-score by the percentage weight for each exam and homework. For any given exam or homework, the class average translates to a T-score of 50.

You are assigned the more favorable grade based on these two measures using the cut-off scores shown in Table 1, with G_m denoting the grade assigned to the class average. The value of G_m is adjusted to reflect the class composition (e.g., a class of good students vs. a class of poor students), and the level of difficulty of exams. Typically, in a class of good students with a raw class average of about 80%, G_m = 3.0.

The T-score more fairly accounts for somewhat erratic performances. A student who does poorly in one exam but makes up for it by performing progressively better in the other exams would receive a more favorable grade based on the T-scores than on the raw scores. For example, consider the data in Table 2 in which all scores are out of 100. Student A did very poorly in the first exam, scored slightly above average in the second exam, and well above average in the third exam. Student B on the other hand, scored slightly above average in the first two exams, but below average in the third exam. Based on the raw scores, Student A would receive a grade of 2.0 while Student B would receive a 2.5. However, based on the T-scores, with G_m = 3.0, both students would receive a grade of 2.5. In fact, based on the T-scores, Student A's overall performance would be judged to be a little better than Student B's.

Course Outline