This module aims to provide knowledge and understanding of fundamental principles of soil mechanics and to teach how to use these principles in civil engineering practice. By the end of the course, the students will be able to describe and classify porous soils and calculate basic properties, understand the importance of water and apply the effective stress concept, analyse steady state water flow through soils, analyse one-dimensional long-term settlements in soils, understand the deformation behaviour of soils under various conditions, apply basic Mohr Circle and stress path concepts to describe the failure of soils, and analyse the stability of earth retaining structures.