ABSTRACT
At ETH Zurich, demonstration models have been successfully used for undergraduate teaching in geotechnics for many years. They serve to visualize phenomena such as the stability of dams with and without toe drains, the hydraulic failure in excavations due to high gradients, the effectiveness of dewatering measures, the performance of mineral and synthetic filters if designed according to the filter requirements or not, the development of failure planes in case of active or passive earth pressures and of base failures. It is vital that demonstration models clearly show what the student is supposed to observe. Therefore these models have been especially designed for demonstrations and gradually improved. The aims of these models, the details of their setup and the mode of application are outlined in the paper.
