Civil Engineering Association

This is the screen version of the book SOIL MECHANICS, an elementary textbook for students of civil engineering.

This book is the text for the introductory course of Soil Mechanics in the Department of Civil Engineering of the Delft University of Technology, as I have given from 1980 until my retirement in 2002. It contains an introduction into the major principles and methods of soil mechanics, such as the analysis of stresses, deformations, and stability. The most important methods of determining soil parameters, in the laboratory and in situ, are also described. Some basic principles of applied mechanics that are frequently used are presented in Appendices. The subdivision into chapters is such that one chapter can be treated in a single lecture, approximately. Comments of students and other users on the material in earlier versions of this book have been implemented in the present version, and errors have been corrected. Remaining errors are the author’s responsibility, of course, and all comments will be appreciated. An important contribution to the production of the printed edition, and to this screen edition, has been the typesetting program TEX, by Donald Knuth, in the LATEXimplementation by Leslie Lamport. Most of the figures have been constructed in LATEX, using the PICTEXmacros. The logo was produced by Professor G. de Josselin de Jong, who played an important role in developing soil mechanics as a branch of science, and who taught me soil mechanics. Since 2001 the English version of this book has been made available on the internet, on the website <http://geo.verruijt.net>. Several users, from all over the world, have been kind enough to send me their comments or their suggestions for corrections or improvements. In recent versions of the screenbook it has also been attempted to incorporate the figures better into the text, using the macro wrapfigure, and colors. In this way the appearance of many pages seems to have been improved. Upon the suggestion of Prof. Emmanuel Detournay of the University of Minnesota, the problems at the end of chapters have been supplemented in the 2010 version by worked examples, as a further aid to students. Additional sets of exercises and problems are available in the file SoilMex.ZIP.