Residual soils are found in many parts of the world and are used extensively as construction materials for roads, embankments and dams, and to support the foundations of buildings, bridges and load-bearing pavements. The characteristics and engineering properties of residual soils can differ significantly from those of the more familiar transported soils. The fact that residual soils occur often in areas with tropical and sub-tropical climates and (extensively) in semi-arid climates, adds another dimension to their engineering performance, that of unsaturation.

Although there are...

There are other books on unsaturated soil mechanics, but this book is different. Unsaturated soil mechanics is only one aspect of a continuous range of soil mechanics studies that extends from the rheology of high water content soil slurries to the mechanics of soft soils, to stiff saturated soils, to unsaturated soils, and, at the far end of the range, to dry soils.
In reality, the water content of all soils, that are not permanently submerged, varies seasonally. In most climatic zones, rainfall varies during the year and the depth of the water table varies sympathetically. In applying...