Customer Reviews

Soil Behaviour and Critical State Soil Mechanics

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Let me recommend this book to you, if you are interested in soil mechanics, numerical modelling, and if you try to understand soils well.
Critical states soil mechanics is a popular framework for the recent developement of many soil constitutive models. This book is a step by step exploration of this framework, especially Modified Cam Clay model, both conceptually and numerically. The stress-strain-strength behaviors of cohesive and cohesionless soils under drained or undrained condition can be quantitively determined using this simple model. More sophisticated models in the current research front, for example, MIT S2 model, bounding surface models, are all shadowed within critical state concepts.
Overall, it is a book about a very useful elasto-plastic soil mechanics model. It uses some fundamentals of elasticity and plasticity. You may meet a little bit mathematics there, but that is almost trivial compared with that used in solid mechanics and theory of plasticity.

This is a judiciously crafted book. It is not bogged down by advanced mathematics of continuum mechanics and plasticity theory. But this should not deceive one into believing that it will be an easy reading throughout. Perhaps the converse is true. Verbal explanation as the basic method instead of mathematics in conveying ideas, surely has its advantages. But it contains lots of difficulties as well. It requires tremendous effort on the part of the author to achieve the understanding of the reader. This care and effort is, understandably, provided rather rarely , especially by the masters. This book also is not an exception in this respect. Surely the author knows very well what he intends to convey. But at many places, the explanations are loose and the wording is not careful enough. Consequently it is highly disputable whether the image of understanding in the readers brain coincides with the authors intention.
In arriving to formulas and results, the intermediate steps are almost always omitted. This might be good to keep the volume at a modest level. But here it is to a degree that one sometimes get the impression and annoyance of coming into face to face with something simply out of hat. Of course also the readers orientation and habits might play the decisive role in this regard. So if you are fond of some logical following and rigor, then you must be well prepared to beat your brains out in reading this book. I have derived and completed every single missing step until reaching "Rowe's stress- dilatancy relation" in chapter 8. And at this point I have given up flat.
All in all, a good but tough book to gain some really useful insight into soil behavior. One of the best in critical soil mechanics where scarcity is prominent. Sincere thanks are due to the author for his painstaking and efforts.

This book is excellent. Giving you the basic, and advanced knowledge of soil behavior written in the most simplest way.
Great work.

All geotechnical engineers must read this book. A beautifully crafted book with insight into soil strength and soil behavior. Wait untill the end of the chapters where theoretical developments are extended to describe laboratory testing from triaxial testings to Atterberg's limit.

I don't know how to explain about that but this book's really the best.