Military Technological College

Department of Civil Engineering and Quantity Surveying

RETAINING STRUCTURES AND FOUNDATION DESIGN
EXAMINATIONS GENERIC FEEDBACK

Summary of examination generic Feedback AY2021

MTCC6020

This generic feedback corresponds to the module MTCC6020 Retaining Structures and Foundation Design,
which was delivered in Semester 1 of AY2021. It comprised of three artefacts: 1) CW1 – Individual
manual design report on foundation; 2) CW2 – Computer design report on foundaiton; 3) 2 hour
summative exam.

The feedback for CW1 and CW2 was given individually to students via Turnitin and/or hardcopy. This
feedback summary refers to the examination results of MTCC6020. The examination artefact weighed
60% of the overall module average.

In general the examination results were satisfactory with a reasonable distribution curve. No failures
failures were observed in the examination artefact.

Some common aspects among the student performance were observed during the marking of
examinations, and these were as follows:

1. Question 1 – Shallow footing design

 Most students did not state the correct assumptions of the short term and long term effects.
 The applied pressure on the footing was calculated well by most students.
 Some critical errors in shape and depth factors lead to incorrect safety factors for the short term
case.
 For the long term capacity, almost all students did not use the correct equation considering the
water table depth, which lead to incorrect safety factors.

2. Question 2 – Slope and earth dam design

 Almost all students provided very adequate responses to issues related to earth dams and ways
to prevent damage.
 Students were not able to identify the correct height of the slope given the slope properties.
 Most students were able to determine the correct dry and saturated unit weights and apply the
correct factor of safety equations (with slight errors due to incorrect height).

3. Question 3 – Retaining wall design

 Most students were able to determine the correct distribution of active and passive pressures
on the wall. However some students performed critical errors in computing the active forces.
 Most students applied carry over errors of the active forces when computing the sliding factor
of safety. Some students also did not compute correct resisting weights.
 Most students provided a very detailed conceptual design of the drainage facility of the wall.
Some students however did not provided adequate justification of the need for weepholes.