Although theoretical in character, this book provides a useful source of information for those dealing with practical problems relating to rock and soil mechanics - a discipline which, in the view of the authors, attempts to apply the theory of continuum to the mechanical investigation of rock and soil media. The book is in two separate parts. The first part, embodying the first three chapters, is devoted to a description of the media of interest. Chapter 1 introduces the main argument and discusses the essence of the discipline and its links with other branches of science which are concerned, on the one hand, with technical mechanics and, on the other, with the properties, origins, and formation of rock and soil strata under natural field conditions. Chapter 2 describes mechanical models of bodies useful for the purpose of the discourse and defines the concept of the limit shear resistance of soils and rocks. Chapter 3 gives the actual properties of soils and rocks determined from experiments in laboratories and in situ. Several tests used in geotechnical engineering are described and interconnections between the physical state of rocks and soils and their rheological parameters are considered.The second part of the book considers the applications of various theories which were either first developed for descriptive purposes in continuum mechanics and then adopted in soil and rock mechanics, or were specially developed for the latter discipline. Chapter 4 discusses the application of the theory of linear viscoelasticity in solving problems of stable behaviour of rocks and soils. Chapter 5 covers the use of the groundwater flow theory as applied to several problems connected with water movement in an undeformable soil or rock skeleton. Chapter 6 is a natural expansion of the arguments put forward in the previous chapter. Here the movement of water is regarded as the cause of deformation of the rock or soil skeleton and the consolidation theory developed on this basis is presented in a novel formulation. Some new engineering solutions are also reported. The seventh chapter is devoted to the limit state theory as applied to the study of the mechanical behaviour of soils and rocks. It presents some new solutions and methods which include both static and kinematic aspects of the problem, and some original effective methods for investigating media of limited cohesion. The final chapter gives a systematic account of the mechanics of highly dispersed soils, commonly called clays.

This book presents a one-stop reference to the empirical correlations used extensively in geotechnical engineering. Empirical correlations play a key role in geotechnical engineering designs and analysis. Laboratory and in situ testing of soils can add significant cost to a civil engineering project. By using appropriate empirical correlations, it is possible to derive many design parameters, thus limiting our reliance on these soil tests. The authors have decades of experience in geotechnical engineering, as professional engineers or researchers. The objective of this book is to present a critical evaluation of a wide range of empirical correlations reported in the literature, along with typical values of soil parameters, in the light of their experience and knowledge. This book will be a one-stop-shop for the practising professionals, geotechnical researchers and academics looking for specific correlations for estimating certain geotechnical parameters. The empirical correlations in the forms of equations and charts and typical values are collated from extensive literature review, and from the authors' database.

This publication contains the papers presented at the 15th European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ECSMGE), held in Athens, Greece. Considerable progress has been made in recent decades in understanding the engineering behavior of those hard soils and weak rocks that clearly fall into either the field of soil or of rock mechanics, and there have been important developments in design and construction methods to cope with them. Progress would be even more desirable, however, for those materials which fall into the ‘grey’ area between soils and rocks. They present particular challenges due to their diversity, the difficulties and problems arising in their identification and classification, their sampling and testing and in the establishment of suitable models to adequately describe their behavior. The publication aims to provide an updated overview of the existing worldwide knowledge of the geological features, engineering properties and behavior of such hard soils and weak rocks, with particular reference to the design and construction methods and problems associated with these materials. Part 4 was published post-conference and includes Conference Reports.