Unsaturated Soil Mechanics in Geotechnical Practice

Geoffrey Blight completed his Bachelor and Master degrees at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and his PhD at Imperial College, London. There he carried out some of the earliest research on the mechanics of unsaturated soils, under the supervision of the legendary Alan Bishop. His early work, published jointly with Bishop and others in 1960, 1961 and 1963, provided data that is still being used by new generations of researchers on unsaturated soil behaviour. He soon became interested in the application of unsaturated soil mechanics to residual soils and mine waste and has published extensively in these areas. He has also applied unsaturated soil mechanics principles in related fields such as concrete and silo technology. He was a member of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering’s Technical Committee on the Properties of Tropical and Residual Soils from 1982 to 1997 and served as Chairman from 1994 to 1997. He edited and co-authored the first (1997) edition of Mechanics of residual soils, which was produced during his Chairmanship. In addition to the second edition of Mechanics of residual soils (2012), he has also authored or co-authored the books: Assessing loads on silos and other bulk storage structures (2006), Geotechnical engineering for mine waste storage facilities (2010), Alkali-aggregate reaction and structural damage to concrete (2011), all published by CRC Press/Balkema.

• 1. Historical Review of the Development of Unsaturated Soil Mechanics 2. Determining Effective Stresses in Unsaturated Soils 3. Measuring and Controlling Suction 4. Interactions between the Atmosphere and the Earth's Surface: Conservative Interactions- Infiltration, Evaporation and Water Storage 5. Interactions between the Atmosphere and the Earth's Surface: Destructive Interactions- Water and Wind Erosion, Piping Erosion 6. The Mechanics of Compaction 7. Steady and Unsteady Flow of Water and Air through Soils- Permeability of Unsaturated and Saturated Soils 8. Compressibility, Settlement and Heave of Unsaturated Soils 9. Measurements of the Strenght of Unsaturated Soil