These proceedings are a continuation of the series of International Conferences in Germany entitled "Mechanics of Unsaturated Soils." The objective is to discuss and understand unsaturated soil behaviour, so that engineered activities are improved in terms of judgement and quality. In addition to knowledge of classical concepts, it is a challenge to adapt convincing new concepts and present them in such a way that they can be used in engineering practices.
This volume presents the work of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers on unsaturated soil mechanincs. Topics covered include: innovative experimental techniques; new experimental data on compacted, collapsible and swelling soils; and advances in constitutive modelling.
These proceedings document the various papers delivered and partially presented at the International Conference “From experimental evidence towards numerical modeling of unsaturated soils,” which was held in Weimar (Germany) during 18-19 September 2003. The conference was organized under the auspices of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) and the National German G- technical Society (DGGT). The need to understand the behavior of unsaturated soils is becoming exclusively - sential for the geotechnical engineers and designers. In the last three decades many - searchers have made significant contribution to the understanding of the unsaturated soil mechanics. Nevertheless, application of the subject to variety of new problems still - quires our attention. This International conference is a mere attempt to unite researchers and engineers in geotechnical engineering and to discuss about the problems associated with the unsaturated soils. Doing so the objectives of these lecture notes are as follows: - to promote unsaturated soil mechanics for practical application, - to exchange experiences in experimental unsaturated soil mechanics and numerical modeling, - to discuss application of unsaturated soil mechanics to variety of problems. In other words, we could also name these two volumes as “From theory to daily pr- tice”. I would like to extend my deep sense of appreciation as the editor and the Head of the organizing committee, to many persons who have contributed either directly or indirectly to organize the International conference and to finalize these proceedings.
In recent decades the development of unsaturated soil mechanics has been remarkable, resulting in momentous advances in fundamental knowledge, testing techniques, computational procedures, prediction methodologies and geotechnical practice. The advances have spanned the full spectrum of theory and practice. In addition, unsaturated materials exhibiting complex behaviour such as residual soils, swelling soils, compacted soils, collapsing soils, tropical soils and solid wastes have been integrated in a common understanding of shared behaviour features. It is also noteworthy that unsaturated soil mechanics has proved surprisingly fruitful in expanding to other neighbouring areas such as swelling rocks, rockfill mechanics, and freezing soils. As a consequence, geotechnical engineering involving unsaturated soils can be now approached from a more rational and systematic perspective leading towards an improved and more effective practice. Unsaturated Soils contains the papers presented at the 5th International Conference on Unsaturated Soil (Barcelona, Spain, 6-8 September 2010). They report significant advances in the areas of unsaturated soil behaviour, testing techniques, constitutive and numerical modelling and applications. The areas of application include soil-atmosphere interaction, foundations, slopes, embankments, pavements, geoenviromental problems and emerging topics. They are complemented by three keynote lectures and three general reports covering general issues of modelling, testing and applications. Unsaturated Soils is a comprehensive record of the state-of-the art in unsaturated soil mechanics and a sound basis for further progress in the future. The two volumes will serve as an essential reference for academics, researchers and practitioners interested in unsaturated soils.
Unsaturated soil mechanics is now increasingly recognized as an integral part of mainstream soil mechanics, and the importance and relevance of unsaturated soil mechanics for the broad field of geotechnical engineering no longer needs to be emphasized. The two volumes making up Unsaturated soils include papers from the 4th Asia Pacific Confere
The main body of the first volume is taken up by five major keynote papers written by a team of international experts, that survey the enormous advances that have taken place in geotechnical engineering since Skempton's pioneering early work. The second volume contains more than 80 articles that report recent research and advances in practice from around the world. The papers focus on the broad range of geotechnical issues, that most interested Professor Skempton, and are grouped under the headings of: - Soil behaviour, characterisation and modelling - Foundations - Slopes and embankments - Ground performance - The influence of geology on civil engineering.
Unsaturated Soils: Advances in Geo-Engineering comprises 136 contributions from leading international researchers and practitioners, presented at the First European Conference on Unsaturated Soils (Durham, UK, 2-4 July 2008). The papers report on the latest advances in geo-engineering aspects of unsaturated soils. It is the first collection to focu
An understanding of the mechanical properties of unsaturated soilsis crucial for geotechnical engineers worldwide, as well as tothose concerned with the interaction of structures with the ground.This book deals principally with fine-grained clays and silts, orsoils containing coarser sand and gravel particles but with asignificant percentage of fines. The study of unsaturated soil is a practical subject, linkingfundamental science to nature. Soils in general are inherentlyvariable and their behaviour is not easy to analyse or predict, andunsaturated soils raise the complexity to a higher level. Evenamongst practicing engineers, there is often lack of awareness ofthe intricacies of the subject. This book offers a perspective ofunsaturated soils based on recent research and demonstrates howthis dovetails with the general discipline of soil mechanics. Following an introduction to the basic soil variables, thephases, the phase interactions and the relevance of soil structure,an up-to-date review of laboratory testing techniques is presented.This includes suction measurement and control techniques intriaxial cell testing. This is followed by an introduction tostress state variables, critical state and theoretical models inunsaturated soils. A detailed description of the thermodynamic principles asapplied to multi-phase materials under equilibrium conditionsfollows. These principles are then used to explore and develop afundamental theoretical basis for analysing unsaturated soils. Soilstructure is broken down into its component parts to developequations describing the dual stress regime. The critical statestrength and compression characteristics of unsaturated soils areexamined and it is shown how the behaviour may be viewed as athree-dimensional model in dimensionless stress-volume space. Theanalysis is then extended to the work input into unsaturated soilsand the development of conjugate stress, volumetric andstrain-increment variables. These are used to examine themicromechanical behaviour of kaolin specimens subjected to triaxialshear strength tests and lead to observations not detectable byother means. Unsaturated Soils: A fundamental interpretation of soilbehaviour covers a rapidly advancing area of study, researchand engineering practice and offers a deeper appreciation of thekey characteristics of unsaturated soil. It provides students andresearchers with a framework for understanding soil behaviour anddemonstrates how to interpret experimental strength and compressiondata. provides engineers with a deeper appreciation of keycharacteristics of unsaturated soils covers a rapidly advancing area of study, research andengineering practice provides students and researchers a framework for understandingsoil behaviour shows how to interpret experimental data on strength andcompression the limited number of books on the subject are all out ofdate
Numerical Methods in Geotechnical Engineering contains 153 scientific papers presented at the 7th European Conference on Numerical Methods in Geotechnical Engineering, NUMGE 2010, held at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway, 2 4 June 2010.The contributions cover topics from emerging research to engineering pra
