UNSATURATED SOIL MECHANICS WITH PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS (HB 2020) Hardcover

Soil is inherently a multi-phase material, composed of solid particles, water, and air. In traditional soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering, it is often treated as an elastic, elastoplastic, or visco-elastoplastic material, typically modeled as a continuous body. However, this book offers an alternative perspective, treating soil as a multi-phase and discrete material and applying basic Newtonian mechanics instead of analytical mechanics. It introduces microscopic models for the solid and fluid phases, and uses probability theory and statistics to derive average physical quantities that correspond to macroscopic properties of soil, such as void ratio and water content. The focus of this book is primarily on the mechanical behavior of dry, partially saturated, and fully saturated sandy soils, as the physicochemical characteristics of clayey soil are still not fully understood. It examines the inter-particle forces at the points of contact between soil particles and the resulting inter-particle stresses, rather than the total or effective stresses typically studied in conventional soil mechanics. The book then derives the deformation and strength behavior, soil-water characteristic curves, and permeability coefficients for water and air based on grain size distribution, particle density, void ratio, and water content. This book serves as a valuable resource for consultants, engineers, researchers, and public sector organizations involved in unsaturated soil testing. It is also an excellent text for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students studying Unsaturated Soil Mechanics.