David Muir Wood – författare

Civil engineering produces the structures of all human settlements worldwide and is a vital discipline for many aspects modern life, underlying housing, transport, and our major areas and buildings related to work, study, and leisure.In this Very Short Introduction, David Muir Wood demonstrates the nature and importance of civil engineering not only in the history of civilization and urbanization, but its range of facets today, and its challenges for the future. Beginning with the challenge of creating a settlement on a deserted island, which sets out the problems that civil engineers need to solve, he looks at the social and environmental considerations as well as the science, technology, and craft of building bridges, tunnels, houses, and areas of recreation.He highlights the lives of some major civil engineers, including Brunel and Bazalgette, considers the challenges of managing water and energy, and looks at our increasing sensitivity to building and the environment. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Modelling forms an implicit part of all engineering design but many engineers engage in modelling without consciously considering the nature, validity and consequences of the supporting assumptions. Derived from courses given to postgraduate and final year undergraduate MEng students, this book presents some of the models that form a part of the typical undergraduate geotechnical curriculum and describes some of the aspects of soil behaviour which contribute to the challenge of geotechnical modelling.Assuming a familiarity with basic soil mechanics and traditional methods of geotechnical design, this book is a valuable tool for students of geotechnical and structural and civil engineering as well as also being useful to practising engineers involved in the specification of numerical or physical geotechnical modelling.

Soils can rarely be described as ideally elastic or perfectly plastic and yet simple elastic and plastic models form the basis for the most traditional geotechnical engineering calculations. With the advent of cheap powerful computers the possibility of performing analyses based on more realistic models has become widely available. One of the aims of this book is to describe the basic ingredients of a family of simple elastic-plastic models of soil behaviour and to demonstrate how such models can be used in numerical analyses. Such numerical analyses are often regarded as mysterious black boxes but a proper appreciation of their worth requires an understanding of the numerical models on which they are based. Though the models on which this book concentrates are simple, understanding of these will indicate the ways in which more sophisticated models will perform.

This book teaches the principles of soil mechanics to undergraduates, along with other properties of engineering materials, to which the students are exposed simultaneously. Using the critical state method of soil mechanics to study the mechanical behavior of soils requires the student to consider density alongside effective stresses, permitting the unification of deformation and strength characteristics. This unification aids the understanding of soil mechanics. This book explores a one-dimensional theme for the presentation of many of the key concepts of soil mechanics - density, stress, stiffness, strength, and fluid flow - and includes a chapter on the analysis of one-dimensional consolidation, which fits nicely with the theme of the book. It also presents some theoretical analyses of soil-structure interaction, which can be analyzed using essentially one-dimensional governing equations. Examples are given at the end of most chapters, and suggestions for laboratory exercises or demonstrations are given.

This book teaches the principles of soil mechanics to undergraduates, along with other properties of engineering materials, to which the students are exposed simultaneously. Using the critical state method of soil mechanics to study the mechanical behavior of soils requires the student to consider density alongside effective stresses, permitting the unification of deformation and strength characteristics. This unification aids the understanding of soil mechanics. This book explores a one-dimensional theme for the presentation of many of the key concepts of soil mechanics - density, stress, stiffness, strength, and fluid flow - and includes a chapter on the analysis of one-dimensional consolidation, which fits nicely with the theme of the book. It also presents some theoretical analyses of soil-structure interaction, which can be analyzed using essentially one-dimensional governing equations. Examples are given at the end of most chapters, and suggestions for laboratory exercises or demonstrations are given.

T. Wichtmann, T. Triantafyllidis: Behaviour of granular soils under environmentally induced cyclic loads. - D. Muir Wood: Constitutive modelling. - C. di Prisco: Creep versus transient loading effects in geotechnical problems. - M. Pastor et al.: Mathematical models for transient, dynamic and cyclic problems in geotechnical engineering. - M. Pastor: Discretization techniques for transient, dynamics and cyclic problems in geotechnical engineering: first order hyperbolic partial diffential equations. - M. Pastor et l.: Discretization techniques for transient, dynamic and cyclic problems in geotechnical engineering: second order equation. - C. di Prisco: Cyclic mechanical response of rigid bodies interacting with sand strata. - D. Muir Wood: Macroelement modelling. - M. F. Randolph: Offshore design approaches and model tests for sub-failure cyclic loading of foundations. - M.F. Randolph: Cyclic interface shearing in sand and cemented solis and application to axial response of piles. - M. F. Randolph: Evaluation of the remoulded shear strength of offshore clays and application to pipline-soil and riser-soil interaction.The book gives a comprehensive description of the mechanical response of soils (granular and cohesive materials) under cyclic loading. It provides the geotechnical engineer with the theoretical and analytical tools necessary for the evaluation of settlements developng with time under cyclic, einvironmentally idncued loads (such as wave motion, wind actions, water table level variation) and their consequences for the serviceability and durability of structures such as the shallow or deep foundations used in offshore engineering, caisson beakwaters, ballast and airport pavements and also to interpret monitoring data, obtained from both natural and artificial slopes and earth embankments, for the purposes of risk assessment and mitigation.