A Primer on Theoretical Soil Mechanics

‘The last several decades have seen a surge of papers on the constitutive modelling of soils, the vast majority of them based on complex and often obscure plasticity concepts. Scientists not specializing in the field lost track and got largely confused. The present book by one of the most prominent scholars in the field succeeds in structuring both the fundamentals and the essential knowledge gained hitherto in a very appealing concise form … The underlying principles are easy to follow and the resulting equations astonishingly short. Predictions of the soil response reproduce all essential features observed in experiments. Besides theory, the text contains justified criticism on current issues in civil engineering. The book is a pleasure to read, and will hopefully become, especially for young scientists, a guide to navigate through the complex field of soil mechanics.’ Christos Vrettos, Technical University of Kaiserslautern‘With this book, Prof. Kolymbas has successfully created a future reference work in which the connections between continuum mechanics and soil mechanics are presented clearly and precisely. The author systematically bridges the topics of soil mechanics with continuum mechanics. First, the basic to more manifold soil behavior is introduced, followed by the basics of continuum mechanics. Later, an introduction to different frameworks for modelling soils, such as Plasticity, Hypoplasticity and Barodesy, is given. Prof Kolymbas has created an objective book written with passion and inspiration.’ Hans Henning Stutz, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute for Soil Mechanics and Rock Mechanics‘This work by Kolymba is simply fantastic: as a primer on ‘continuum mechanics adapted to soil, a granular material’ (p. ix) it is surprisingly - even incredibly - readable and readily understandable, against all possibly preemptive expectations held by prospective readers … a very attractive textbook choice for any student of geology, engineering, or soil science … Highly recommended.’ M. S. Field, Choice

Dimitrios Kolymbas is Emeritus Professor at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, where he worked from 1994 to 2017 as Professor at the Unit of Geotechnical Engineering and Tunnel Engineering. He is the author of several books and more than 100 papers, and invented the new constitutive theories of hypoplasticity and barodesy.