Engineers wishing to build structures on or in rock use the discipline known as rock mechanics. This discipline emerged as a subject in its own right about thirty five years ago, and has developed rapidly ever since. However, rock mechanics is still based to a large extent on analytical techniques that were originally formulated for the mechanical design of structures made from man made materials. The single most important distinction between man-made materials and the natural material rock is that rock contains fractures, of many kinds on many scales; and because the fractures - of whatever kin- represent breaks in the mechanical continuum, they are collectively termed 'discontinuities' . An understanding of the mechanical influence of these discontinuities is essential to all rock engineers. Most of the world is made of rock, and most of the rock near the surface is fractured. The fractures dominate the rock mass geometry, deformation modulus, strength, failure behaviour, permeability, and even the local magnitudes and directions of the in situ stress field. Clearly, an understanding of the presence and mechanics of the discontinuities, both singly and in the rock mass context, is therefore of paramount importance to civil, mining and petroleum engineers. Bearing this in mind, it is surprising that until now there has been no book dedicated specifically to the subject of discontinuity analysis in rock engineering.

This book focusses on rock indentation and importance of specific drilling/cutting energy as a performance indicator for drilling/rock cutting. It aids in designing of drill bit and cutting pick, through performance evaluation for a given geometry. It further covers stress distribution along three axes in rock during load application, correlation of specific energy with properties of rocks and statistical modeling to generate mathematical equation to estimate the specific energy indentation, including performance prediction by artificial neural network modeling. Presented models can be used to assess the specific energy in rock indentation from the physic-mechanical properties of rocks. Presents synthesis of rock indentation experiments and analyses. Deals with statistical modeling to generate mathematical equations to estimate the specific energy indentation from the rock parameters/properties. Discusses how to find the performance of drill and cutting bits during drilling or cutting operations through indentation test. Covers numerical modeling to explain stress distribution in rock during rock indentation. Includes artificial neural network concepts used in field of rock mechanics. This book is aimed at researchers and graduate students in mining/geological engineering, mechanical engineering.

Cities built on unconsolidated sediments consisting of clays, silt, peat, and sand, are particularly susceptible to subsidence. Such regions are common in delta areas, where rivers empty into the oceans, along flood plains adjacent to rivers, and in coastal marsh lands. Building cities in such areas aggravates the problem for several reasons: 1. Construction of buildings and streets adds weight to the region causing additional soil deformations. 2. Often the regions have to be drained in order to be occupied. This results in lowering of the water table and leads to hydro-compaction. 3. Often the groundwater is used as a source of water for both human consumption and industrial use. 4. Levees and dams are often built to prevent or control flooding. Earth fissures caused by ground failure in areas of uneven or differential compaction have damaged buildings, roads and highways, railroads, flood-control structures and sewer lines. As emphasized by Barends , "in order to develop a legal framework to claims and litigation, it is essential that direct and indirect causes of land subsidence effects can be quantified with sufficient accuracy from a technical and scientific point of view." Most existing methods and software applications treat the subsidence problem by analyzing one of the causes. This is due to the fact that the causes appear at different spatial scales. For example, over-pumping creates large scale subsidence, while building loading creates local subsidence/consolidation only. Then, maximum permissible land subsidence (or consolidation) is a constraint in different management problems such as: groundwater management, planning of town and/or laws on building construction. It is, therefore, necessary to quantify the contribution of each cause to soil subsidence of the ground surface in cities urban area. In this text book, we present an engineering approach based on the Biot system of equations to predict the soil settlement due to subsidence, resulting from different causes. Also we present a case study of The Bangkok Metropolitan Area (BMA).

Topics covered in this text include: geology and structural geology; mechanics; dynamics of jointed and faulted rock; physical modelling and testing; constitutive modelling; seismicity and tectonics; instrumentation; hydraulics; and applications.

The 16th ICSMGE responds to the needs of the engineering and construction community, promoting dialog and exchange between academia and practice in various aspects of soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering. This is reflected in the central theme of the conference 'Geotechnology in Harmony with the Global Environment'. The proceedings of the conference are of great interest for geo-engineers and researchers in soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering. Volume 1 contains 5 plenary session lectures, the Terzaghi Oration, Heritage Lecture, and 3 papers presented in the major project session. Volumes 2, 3, and 4 contain papers with the following topics: Soil mechanics in general; Infrastructure and mobility; Environmental issues of geotechnical engineering; Enhancing natural disaster reduction systems; Professional practice and education. Volume 5 contains the report of practitioner/academic forum, 20 general reports, a summary of the sessions and workshops held during the conference.