Simulate Soil Consolidation
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Simulate Soil Consolidation
You are tasked to write the parts needed for the simulation of soil consolidation.
Changes to description
This document is being updated:
Students should refer to the Ed website for any clari�cations, or changes to being made to the
assignment description.
A brief list of changes is documented here.
9 May 2021
CLAY_COMPRESSIBILITY_RATE is 0.001. It is a constant de�ning water units moved per 1kN per
hour (no longer 100kN)
A message to all students about Academic Integrity
This is an assignment and sta� are not permitted to give speci�c guidance on your code, or how to
solve the speci�c problem. That is the purpose of the assessment that you are required to perform to
achieve the grade.
You may ask clari�cation questions about the assignment description. This is often necessary to
implement functionality that is otherwise ambiguous.
The assignment description is not intended to be complete and you can con�rm your assumptions in
a form of a question. In asking the question you should be quoting the description you are asking
about.
If you have a question to ask on Ed please search before asking. However, remember that you
should not be posting any assignment code publicly, as this would constitute academic
dishonesty.
Also, do not wait too long before starting. This assignment needs time and sustained e�ort.
Background
Consolidation is the gradual changes in volume of a partly or fully saturated soil when subject to a
sustained load. The changes are mainly due to the removal of gases, �uids and organic matter from
the soil. We simplify our model to consider this matter as water.
A sample of soil shows the particles arranged with voids between them.
Soil can be composed of many minerals, primary silica, but clay, sand, shale, rock. Some of these
have more water content than others. Water is present within soil and we can assume water is an
incompressible �uid, where any pressure applied will cause the water to move to a lower pressure.
The water is e�ectively squeezed out of the soil very slowly.
Soil consolidation has a huge impact on the planning and construction of buildings throughout
history. The leaning tower of Pisa is a great example to showcase the importance of soil consolidation
The purpose of the simulation is to determine:
how long consolidation will take for a given load and placement over a soil con�guration
how much water is displaced during consolidation
what are the changes in height of the soil after consolidation
Simulation Input and Output
functionality for �le input/output provided for you
The simulation will require information about the nature of the soil, the load, and the parameters
used to simulate. These are read from a �le using the three command line arguments.
$ simulate.py