Paper format. Professional Engineers Ontario /
Engineers Canada National Examinations, December 2016 — 98-Civ-B3 Geotechnical
Design. Three hours, OPEN BOOK, any non-communicating calculator. Section A carries five
discussion questions of 7 marks each (answer any four); Section B carries four design
questions of 24 marks each (answer any three); the examinable total is
4 × 7 + 3 × 24 = 100 marks. All nine questions are worked below, because the
set is a study resource rather than a timed attempt.
Reference texts (98-Civ-B3 / 16-Civ-B3 Geotechnical Design).
- B. M. Das, Principles of Foundation Engineering, 9th ed. — subsurface
exploration (Ch. 2), bearing capacity of shallow foundations (Ch. 3), settlement of shallow
foundations including Schmertmann's strain-influence method (Ch. 5), retaining walls
(Ch. 8), pile foundations (Ch. 11), drilled shafts (Ch. 12).
- B. M. Das, Principles of Geotechnical Engineering, 9th ed. — shear
strength (Ch. 12), lateral earth pressure (Ch. 13), slope stability (Ch. 15).
- Canadian Geotechnical Society, Canadian Foundation Engineering Manual (CFEM),
4th ed. — the governing Canadian practice document for site investigation, in-situ
testing, bearing resistance, deep foundations and earth-retaining structures.
- R. F. Craig, Craig's Soil Mechanics, 9th ed. — effective stress, undrained
versus drained behaviour, earth pressure, and the total-stress circular-arc slope
analysis.
- M. J. Tomlinson & J. Woodward, Pile Design and Construction Practice,
6th ed. — shaft adhesion in clay and under-reamed (belled) bored piles.
- P. K. Robertson & K. L. Cabal, Guide to Cone Penetration Testing, 6th ed.
— CPT interpretation and CPT-versus-SPT selection.
Sources of design charts and assumed values (page-1 Note 6). Note 6
requires the candidate to identify the source of every design chart and of every value
assumed where the paper supplies none. They are named at the point of use and collected
here:
- Adhesion factor α = 0.55 for a drilled shaft in clay (Q6)
— O'Neill and Reese (1999), reproduced in Das, Principles of Foundation
Engineering, 9th ed., Section 12.9; the exclusion of the top 1.5 m and of one shaft
diameter above the bell comes from the same source.
- Bearing-capacity factor Nc* = 9 (Q6) — Skempton
(1951), as tabulated in Das, Section 11.11.
- Overburden correction CN = √(pa/σ'o)
(Q7) — Liao and Whitman (1986), Das Principles of Geotechnical Engineering,
Section 17.6.
- SPT-to-friction-angle correlation (Q7) — Peck, Hanson and Thornburn
(1974) as fitted by Wolff (1989); cross-checked against Kulhawy and Mayne (1990). Both are
tabulated in Das, Principles of Foundation Engineering, 9th ed., Section 2.9.
- Bearing-capacity factors and shape/depth factors (Q7) — Vesic (1973) and
De Beer (1970), Das Sections 3.6 and 3.7.
- Strain-influence diagram and the C1, C2 factors (Q7)
— Schmertmann, Hartman and Brown (1978), Das Section 5.6; the modulus correlation
Es = 500(N60 + 15) kPa is Bowles (1996), reproduced in the same
section.
- Rankine active coefficient for an inclined backfill (Q9) — Das,
Principles of Geotechnical Engineering, 9th ed., Eq. (13.35); the base friction
and adhesion reductions k1 = k2 = 2/3 are Das Section 8.4.
- Unit weight of the submerged backfill (Q9) — assumed equal to the
printed moist unit weight, 18 kN/m3, in the absence of a saturated value; the
consequence of that assumption is bounded in the Q9 callout.
Section A
