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Book review |
Kingston University UK
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Professor Muir Wood puts an interesting slant on soil mechanics theory: all theoretical solutions are just models. This proposition allows him to write a book on geotechnical modelling which is populated by many of the simple, classical, solutions that are the stock in trade of the undergraduate (or maybe Masters’) course in soil mechanics. However, the central idea means that some of the solutions that are lumped together are a rather eclectic collection: for example, under ‘empirical models’ we find the vane test, the pressuremeter, cone tests and their correlation with settlement of footings on sand, and Skempton & Bjerrum's slant on consolidation settlement.
However, the idea is exhausted by the end of Chapter 1, and the rest of the book turns into a comparatively ordinary (if advanced) text book after that. One chapter covers soil properties, and the remaining six deal with various types of models, although physical modelling (a broad field) turns into centrifuge modelling (a rather narrower one).
For the engineering geologist, the idea that geological modelling can be dealt with in a couple of pages in Chapter 1, and then be omitted for the rest of the 461-page text, will seem remarkable. Also absent is any coverage of rock mechanics. Even in soil mechanics, the issue of the stability of slopes merits only a cover illustration (on the soft cover), a page or two on dimensional analysis, and a single diagram showing that the stress conditions change around a slip surface, which given the extensive coverage
