SYNOPSIS

This short course is tailored for geotechnical practitioners (beginners to intermediate level) using FEM in geotechnical engineering. It discusses the basics of FEM and its application in geotechnical analyses as well as some case studies. The topics covered are as follows:

Session 1:    
• Basics of FEM soil modelling, elasticity vs plasticity
• Mohr Coulomb vs Hardening Soil/Soft Soil Creep models

Session 2:    
• Determination of Soil parameters (CID and Oedometer tests)
• Pitfalls of FEM Analyses (Error to Avoid)

Session 3:    
• Drained and Undrained Analysis (illustrate with example)
• Consolidation Analysis (illustrate with example)
• Seepage Analysis (When needed and how to calibrate)

Session 4:    
• Deep Excavations and Slope Engineering in FEM (typical cases)
• Advanced FEM for DSM models (model for tension and compression softening)


BIODATA OF SPEAKER

Assoc. Prof. Harry Tan Siew Ann was a Colombo Plan Scholar who graduated from Auckland University with First Class Honors B.Eng. in 1977 as the top engineering graduate of the school. He joined NUS as a Senior Tutor and earned his M.Eng. in 1982. His M.Eng. thesis research topic is in the Geotechnical area on the excess pore pressure behavior of marine clay in reclaimed land. He was awarded the NUS Overseas Graduate Scholarship to pursue his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in geotechnical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, which he completed 1982 and 1985, respectively. He has been a staff member of the Department of Civil Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS) since May 1980.

Assoc. Prof. Tan has taught courses in Geotechnical and Foundation Engineering, with post-graduate courses in Earth Retaining Structures and Deep Excavations, Slope Engineering and Groundwater Seepage and Consolidation. He has received several teaching commendation awards from the Department of Civil Engineering. For the year 2004/2005, he was given the Excellent Teacher for being amongst the best of teachers in NUS, and also the Engineering Educator Award for being the best teacher in the Department of Civil Engineering and the Faculty of Engineering at NUS.

He has published over 200 technical papers covering topics such as Deep Excavations, Pile Foundations, Geosynthetics, Ground Improvement of Soft Clays, and Land Reclamation. He serves on the editorial board of “Geotextiles and Geomembranes”, of the International Society of Geosynthetics, and the Journal of “Geotechnical Engineering” of the South East Asian Geotechnical Society since 1997.

He has served as a committee member of several technical committees, including the US Transportation Research Board committee A2K06 on subsurface drainage in highway pavements, TC-09 Technical Committee on Earth Reinforcement for the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, SPRING Singapore technical assessor on geotechnical testing and site investigation, SPRING committee on earthworks and geotechnical engineering. Prof Tan had served as Chairman of TR26 the new Technical Reference for Deep Excavation Works from 2005 to 2010. This code is the latest and current code for deep excavation best practice in Singapore.

He also served on the WG of BCA for the implementation of EC7 in Engineering Practice in 2014-2015, and has conducted EC7 courses in BCA Academy since 2011. In 2012 to 2015, he has conducted in-house EC7 course for the private sector companies including AECOM, LSWCE and CPG. He was one of the Keynote Speaker for the GeoSS-BCA Seminar on Deep Foundations on 24 April 2015, focusing on the use of EC7 for pile foundation design.

Assoc. Prof. Tan has been a user of Plaxis since 1992. He was actively involved in teaching Plaxis courses in industry since 2000. He has taught the use of Plaxis in Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, India, Australia and the Netherlands over the last 10 years. He was the course leader for the 1st Asian Experienced Users Plaxis course held in Singapore in August 2003, and again in Thailand in April 2006. He serves on the Scientific Network committee for the Plaxis code development, training and applications since 2002.

He is a registered professional engineer in Singapore since 1992, and has been involved in several major consulting jobs in Singapore and Malaysia. His latest involvement is to act as leader of the State “Expert Witness Team” comprising of four international experts in the COI (Committee of Inquiry) for the Nicoll Highway tunnel LTA C824 collapse incident of 20th April 2004. He also served as the State Expert Witness for the Church Street pile foundation failure case.

He was actively involved in many deep excavation projects in both public sector and private sector cases: including many LTA projects in Circle Line, MCE, DTL1 and DTL2 stations and tunnels. He was an invited speaker at ER2010 (Earth Retention Conference at Seattle USA) for the session on case histories to address the subject of numerical analysis of retention systems for deep excavations.

Assoc. Prof. Tan also served on the GeoSS-BCA Working Group for the implementation of EC7 for Ground Investigations and Pile Foundations from Jan 2015 till present. He was one of the Keynote Speaker for the GeoSS-BCA Seminar on Deep Foundations on 24 April 2015, focusing on the use of EC7 for pile foundation design.