Advanced Unsaturated Soil Mechanics and Engineering


Preface

Civil engineers build on or in the earth’s surface. Most of the earth’s land

surface comprises notoriously hazardous geomaterials called ‘unsaturated

soils’. These soils are a hazard to earth structures and earth-supported

structures because on wetting, by rain or other means, they can expand or

collapse with serious consequences for cost and safety. This book puts the

mechanics and engineering of unsaturated soils into a logical framework

for civil engineering analysis and design. It also explains the laboratory and

field testing and research that are the logical basis of this modern approach

to safe construction in these hazardous geomaterials.

A search of the Institution of Civil Engineers’ library web site returns

a total of 462 titles of books, conference proceedings and articles on ‘soil

mechanics’. A search for ‘unsaturated soil mechanics’, however, returns only

66 titles, or just over 14 per cent of the total. Of these only two of the

titles are text books. This is in spite of the fact that most of the soils on our

planet’s land surface are unsaturated. The small proportion of unsaturated

soil titles is hardly surprising, however. This is because post-Terzaghi soil

mechanics had its origins in northern Europe and North America where

soils involved in civil engineering construction are mainly saturated or nearsaturated.

So naturally the science developed on the (simplified) assumption

of saturation.

With the rapid development, however, of China, India, Central and South





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