Popularity of this book amongst the undergraduate students and practising engineers has made the author to revive the book with updated materials.

The second edition of the book comprises 24 chapters dealing with four components, viz. Basic Principles of Soil Mechanics, Laboratory Determination of Soil Parameters Under Different Field Conditions, Earth Pressure Problems Including Foundations and Advanced Topics on Soil Mechanics Applications.

Soil Mechanics: Basic Concepts and Engineering Applications is primarily designed as a main text for university students taking first degree courses in civil engineering as well as environmental and agricultural engineering. Emphasis is placed on presenting fundamental behaviour before more advanced topics are introduced. The special structure of the book, embodied in each chapter, makes it possible to be used in two, three and four year undergraduate courses in soil mechanics. However, as new and advanced topics that extend beyond standard undergraduate courses are included, the book will also be a valuable resource for the practicing professional engineer. A problem solving approach is adopted through all chapters and 152 worked examples demonstrate the engineering applications, simulate problem solving learning and facilitate self-teaching. There are 113 unsolved problems with answers set for solution by students.

Soil can exist as a naturally occurring material in its undisturbed state, or as a compacted material. Geotechnical engineering involves the understanding and prediction of the behavior of soil. Like other construction materials, soil possesses mechanical properties related to strength, compressibility, and permeability. It is important to quantify these properties to predict how soil will behave under field loading for the safe design of soil structures (e.g. embankments, dams, waste containment liners, highway base courses, etc.), as well as other structures that will overly the soil. Quantification of the mechanical properties of soil is performed in the laboratory using standardized laboratory tests. <...>

Laboratory data are critical to the understanding of the properties and genesis of a single pedon, as well as to the understanding of fundamental soil relationships based on many observations of a large number of soils. The development of laboratory methods, the analytical database, and the soil relationships based on those data are the cumulative effort of several generations of scientists.