Fundamentals Of Soil Mechanics For Sedimentary And Residual Soils

Introducing the first integrated coverage of sedimentary and residual soil engineering Despite its prevalence in under-developed parts of the United States and most tropical and sub-tropical countries, residual soil is often characterized as a mere extension of conventional soil mechanics in many textbooks. Now, with the rapid growth of construction in these regions, it is essential to gain a fuller understanding of residual soils and their properties—one that's based on an integrated approach to the study of residual and sedimentary soils. One text puts this understanding well within reach: Fundamentals of Soil Mechanics for Sedimentary and Residual Soils. The first resource to provide equal treatment of both residual and sedimentary soils and their unique engineering properties, this skill-building guide offers: A concise introduction to basic soil mechanics, stress-strain behavior, testing, and design In-depth coverage that spans the full scope of soil engineering, from bearing capacity and foundation design to the stability of slopes A focus on concepts and principles rather than methods, helping you avoid idealized versions of soil behavior and maintain a design approach that is consistent with real soils of the natural world An abundance of worked problems throughout, demonstrating in some cases that conventional design techniques applicable to sedimentary soils are not valid for residual soils Numerous end-of-chapter exercises supported by an online solutions manual Full chapter-ending references Taken together, Fundamentals of Soil Mechanics for Sedimentary and Residual Soils is a comprehensive, balanced soil engineering sourcebook that will prove indispensable for practitioners and students in civil engineering, geotechnical engineering, structural engineering, and geology.

Residual soils are found in many parts of the world and are used extensively as construction materials for roads, embankments and dams, and to support the foundations of buildings, bridges and load-bearing pavements. The characteristics and engineering properties of residual soils can differ significantly from those of the more familiar transported soils. The fact that residual soils occur often in areas with tropical and sub-tropical climates and (extensively) in semi-arid climates, adds another dimension to their engineering performance, that of unsaturation. Although there are many books that deal with the mechanics of soils, these are based mainly on the characteristics and behaviour of saturated transported soils. The first edition of this book was the first book to be written specifically about the mechanics of residual soils. The book was prepared by a panel of authors drawn from the Technical Committee on Tropical and Residual Soils of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering. It was written as a practical professional guide for geotechnical engineers working with residual soils. The second edition has retained the valuable information contained in the first edition. The present editors and authors have extensively revised and augmented the content to bring it completely up to date, adding significantly to the sections on unsaturated soil mechanics and expanding the range and number of instructive case histories. Furthermore, sections on pedocretes, dispersive soils and karst have been added.

Wiley has long held a pre-eminent position as a publisher of books on geotechnical engineering, with a particular strength in soil behavior and soil mechanics, at both the academic and professional level. This reference will be the first book focused entirely on the unique engineering properties of residual soil. Given the predominance of residual soils in the under-developed parts of the United States and the Southern Hemisphere, and the increasing rate of new construction in these regions, the understanding of residual soils is expected to increase in importance in the coming years. This book will be written for the practicing geotechnical engineer working to any degree with residual soils. It will describe the unique properties of residual soil and provide innovative design techniques for building on it safely.The author will draw on his 30 years of practical experience as a practicing geotechnical engineer, imbuing the work with real world examples and practice problems influenced by his work in South America and Southeast Asia.

While many introductory texts on soil mechanics are available, most are either lacking in their explanations of soil behavior or provide far too much information without cogent organization. More significantly, few of those texts go beyond memorization of equations and numbers to provide a practical understanding of why and how soil mechanics work. Based on the authors’ more than 25 years of teaching soil mechanics to engineering students, Soil Mechanics Fundamentals presents a comprehensive introduction to soil mechanics, with emphasis on the engineering significance of what soil is, how it behaves, and why it behaves that way. Concise, yet thorough, the text is organized incrementally, with earlier sections serving as the foundation for more advanced topics. Explaining the varied behavior of soils through mathematics, physics and chemistry, the text covers: Engineering behavior of clays Unified and AASHTO soil classification systems Compaction techniques, water flow and effective stress Stress increments in soil mass and settlement problems Mohr’s Circle application to soil mechanics and shear strength Lateral earth pressure and bearing capacity theories Each chapter is accompanied by example and practicing problems that encourage readers to apply learned concepts to applications with a full understanding of soil behavior fundamentals. With this text, engineering professionals as well as students can confidently determine logical and innovative solutions to challenging situations.

Explains the factors which determine and control the engineering properties of soils--particularly volume change, deformation, strength and permeability. New to this edition: expanded coverage of residual and tropical soils, environmental aspects of soil behavior, material on partly saturated soils, revised treatment of direct or coupled hydraulic, chemical, thermal and electrical flows through soil.

This book is mainly intended to meet the needs of undergraduate students of Civil Engineering. In preparing the first edition of this book, I had two principal aims: firstly to provide the student with a description of soil behavior-and of the effects of the clay minerals and the soil water on such behavior-which was rather more detailed than is usual in an elementary text, and secondly to encourage him to look critically at the traditional methods of analysis and design. The latter point is important, since all such methods require certain simplifying assumptions without which no solution is generally possible. Serious errors in design are seldom the result of failure to understand the methods as such. They more usually arise from a failure to study and understand the geology of the site, or from attempts to apply analytical methods to problems for which the implicit assumptions make them unsuitable. In the design of foundations and earth structures, more than in most branches of engineering, the engineer must be continually exercising his judgment in making decisions. The analytical methods cannot relieve him of this responsibility but properly used, they should ensure that his judgment is based on sound knowledge and not on blind intuition. I hope that the book will prove to be of use to students when their courses are over, and help to bridge the awkward gap between theory and practice.

Residual soils are formed directly from the physical and chemical weathering of the parent material, normally rock of some sort. The characteristics of the residual soils are dependent on factors such as climate, parent materials, topography, drainage and age. The parent materials have a profound in¿uence upon the nature of residual soils formed on them. Residual soil properties vary from region to region due to their heterogeneous nature and highly variable degree of weathering, controlled by regional climatic and topographic conditions and the nature of bedrock. Characterizing changes in the engineering properties of a weathered residual soil has recently been a concern of civil engineers in relation to the stability of slopes, underground space construction and tunneling. Mechanics of Residual Soils covers wide-ranging information of the properties, origins and exploration of residual soils. The different processes by which residual and sedimentary soils are formed are described, and the need to be aware that procedures applicable to sedimentary soils do not necessarily apply to residual soils is emphasized. It is intended to characterize the engineering properties of weathered residual soils and to examine the microfabric nature and pore-size distribution of residual soils. It presents the results of an extensive geotechnical investigation of the residual soils consisting of both ¿eld and laboratory investigations. It investigates the validity of the common empirical correlations, available in the geotechnical literature for transported soils. The e¿ect of saturation on compressibility and shear strength characteristics of residual soils are also investigated. Also include establishing correlations between the parameters measured in situ and those measured in the laboratory.

The aim of this book is to encourage students to develop an understanding of the fundamentals of soil mechanics. It builds a robust and adaptable framework of ideas to support and accommodate the more complex problems and analytical procedures that confront the practising geotechnical engineer. Soil Mechanics: Concepts and Applications covers the soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering topics typically included in university courses in civil engineering and related subjects. Physical rather than mathematical arguments are used in the core sections wherever possible. New features for the second edition include: an accompanying website containing the lecturers solutions manual; a revised chapter on soil strength and soil behaviour separating the basic and more advanced material to aid understanding; a major new section on shallow foundations subject to combined vertical, horizontal and moment loading; revisions to the material on retaining walls, foundations and filter design to account for new research findings and bring it into line with the design philosophy espoused by EC7. More than 50 worked examples including case histories Learning objectives, key points and example questions