Courses Offered at SIU
Semester: Spring 2025
CE-421-001: Foundation Design
Course TA: Bijay Nepal
In this course, students will apply soil mechanics principles to foundation design, focusing on subsurface exploration, bearing capacity, and settlement analysis of shallow foundations. Topics include lateral earth pressures, retaining wall design, and the capacity and settlement of pile foundations under vertical axial loads. By the end of the course, you will have a practical understanding of foundation design for various structural applications.
CE528: Numerical Methods in Civil Engineering
CE 528 introduces fundamental and advanced numerical methods used in civil engineering, covering finite difference, finite element, and optimization techniques. The course spans a broad range of topics including equation solving, matrix computations, and numerical modeling of dynamic and geotechnical problems, with applications across structures, fluids, and transportation systems. Students gain hands-on experience with industry-relevant tools such as MATLAB, Python, ANSYS, PLAXIS, SAP2000, and OpenSees, while developing critical skills in calibration, validation, and simulation of real-world engineering scenarios. Balancing theoretical foundations with practical implementation, the course places significant emphasis on geotechnical applications given the student composition, while maintaining breadth across civil engineering disciplines.
Semester: Fall 2025
CE320: Soil Mechanics
Course TA: Subin Rimal
Explore the fundamental principles of soil mechanics, including soil’s physical and mechanical properties, soil classification, and flow through soils. Topics include effective stress, consolidation, shear strength, and soil compaction. By the end of this course, students can analyze and solve fundamental soil mechanics problems and apply them to practical engineering scenarios.
CE520: Advanced Soil Mechanics
This course presents an advanced treatment of soil mechanics with emphasis on the nature of soil and effective stress principles. It covers permeability and seepage, stress–strain–strength behavior of granular and fine soils, and consolidation theory with settlement analysis.
CE-320L-002: Soil Mechanics Laboratory Experiments
Course TAs: Mukul Bhattarai and Bijay Nepal
The Soil Mechanics Lab provides students hands-on experience with fundamental soil mechanics principles through lab exercises. It complements theoretical knowledge from lectures by offering practical applications and experiments.
Semester: Spring 2025
CE-421-001: Foundation Design
Course TA: Subin Rimal
In this course, students will apply soil mechanics principles to foundation design, focusing on subsurface exploration, bearing capacity, and settlement analysis of shallow foundations. Topics include lateral earth pressures, retaining wall design, and the capacity and settlement of pile foundations under vertical axial loads. By the end of the course, you will have a practical understanding of foundation design for various structural applications.
Semester: Fall 2024
CE320: Soil Mechanics
Course TAs: Sudarshan Shrestha, Mukul Bhattarai
This course explores soil’s physical and mechanical properties, classification, and flow through soils. It introduces effective stress, consolidation, shear strength, and soil compaction for solving fundamental soil mechanics problems.
CE-320L-002: Soil Mechanics Laboratory Experiments
Course TAs: Sudarshan Shrestha, Mukul Bhattarai
Designed to give students hands-on experience in soil mechanics through practical laboratory exercises. It helps connect theoretical knowledge with real-world applications through experiments.
Teaching Assistants
Teaching Assistants (TAs): Spring 2026
Bijay Nepal
Email: bijay.nepal@siu.edu
Teaching Assistants (TAs): Fall 2025
Subin Rimal
Email: subin.rimal@siu.edu
Mukul Bhattarai
Email: mukul.bhattarai1@siu.edu
Bijay Nepal
Email: bijay.nepal@siu.edu
Teaching Assistants (TAs): Spring 2025
Subin Rimal
Email: subin.rimal@siu.edu
Teaching Assistants (TAs): Fall 2024
Sudarshan Shrestha
Email: sudarshan.shrestha@siu.edu
Mukul Bhattarai
Email: mukul.bhattarai1@siu.edu
