James K. Mitchell – författare

Authoritative and generously illustrated resource covering the many properties of soil and its behavior needed for addressing geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering projects and problems. The Fourth Edition of Fundamentals of Soil Behavior has been thoroughly updated to provide the latest information on the physical properties of soil and the fundamentals of its behavior, with hundreds of tables and graphs illustrating correlations among composition, classification, state, and static and dynamic properties. Overall, each topic is addressed in a micro-to-macro sequence, considering behaviors at the atomic and/or particle scales to develop understanding of soil properties and behaviors at the macro-scale, which is relevant to engineering practice. This Fourth Edition includes two new chapters on special features of soil behavior and temperature-dependent soil behavior. Other chapters have been substantially updated to include the latest developments in imaging technology, and analysis numerical simulations that have advanced research on the complexities of soil behavior, and recent experimental data. The content has been reviewed, consolidated, and reorganized to more effectively comunicate key information. The text features end-of-chapter questions and problems to aid in seamless reader comprehension and information retention. Updated by true thought leaders in the field, the Fourth Edition of Fundamentals of Soil Behavior includes detailed information on: Soil formation, covering the earth’s crust, the geologic cycle, rock and mineral stability, weathering, and origin of clay minerals and genesis.Soil mineralogy, covering atomic structure, interatomic bonding, secondary bonds, crystal notation, and clay mineral characteristics.Fundamental engineering characterization of soil, covering granular soils and clay minerals.Observing and quantifying soil fabric, covering qualitative and quantitative assessment of soil fabric.Transport of heat, fluid, and electrical current.The fundamentals of volume change, deformation, and strength properties of soils.The impact of time and temperature changes on soil behavior.Providing an understanding of soil behavior, a fundamental requisite to a wide variety of engineering applications including foundation design and construction, earthwork construction, and geotechnical engineering, Fundamentals of Soil Behavior is an essential learning resource for geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineers, geologists, geophysicists, and students studying geotechnical engineering and granular materials.

This single-volume thoroughly summarizes advances in the past several decades and emerging challenges in fundamental research in geotechnical engineering. These fundamental research frontiers are critically reviewed and described in details in lights of four grand challenges our society faces: climate adaptation, urban sustainability, energy and material resources, and global water resources.  The specific areas critically reviewed, carefully examined, and envisioned are: sensing and measurement, soil properties and their physics roots, multiscale and multiphysics processes in soil, geochemical processes for resilient and sustainable geosystems, biological processes in geotechnics, unsaturated soil mechanics, coupled flow processes in soil, thermal processes in geotechnical engineering, and rock mechanics in the 21st century.