This book covers a range of topics that are of increasing importance in engineering practice: natural hazards, pollution, and environmental protection through good practice.
The first half of the book deals with natural risk factors, of both natural and human origin, that should be considered: subsidence, accidental infiltration, soil instability, rockslides and mudslides, debris flow, and degradation of buildings and monuments due to pollution and climactic effects, for example. These problems are highlighted and it is shown that a combination of sophisticated numerical techniques and extensive experimental investigations are necessary in order to effectively tackle these problems.
The second half of the book is devoted to the use of polluted sites and associated problems, a topic of growing significance given the increasing reclamation of land from abandoned industrial sites for urban development over the last 20 years. Different types of oil pollution and decontamination methods are described, followed by a discussion of waste management and detailed coverage of confinement liners used in surface waste disposal.
About the Author: Bernard Schrefler is professor of Structural Mechanics at the University of Padua. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Wales Swansea where he obtained subsequently a Doctor of Science degree. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science from the St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University, from the Technical University of Lodz and an Honorary Degree from the University of Wales Swansea as well as a Honorary Guest Professorship from the University of Technology of Dalian. He is author of over 350 publications, author/co-author of 5 textbooks and editor/co-editor of 18 monographs and conference proceedings and is associate editor of Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics & Engineering, regional editor of Mechanics Research Communications and serves on the editorial board of 16 International Journals.
Pierre Delage is Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (ENPC), Paris, France and Head of CERMES, the Centre? for Teaching and Research in Soil Mechanics of ENPC. He is also Vice-Chairman of the French Geotechnical Association (CFMS), he has been Chief-Editor from 2000 to 2004 of the Revue Française de Géotechnique. He also participates to the Editorial Boards of Géotechnique (2000-2003), of the Geotechnical Testing Journal, ASTM (1997-present) and of Computers and Geotechnics, Elsevier, (2000-present).
His main research areas concern the coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of soils with applications to unsaturated soils, polluted soils, nuclear waste confinement, soil microstructure, deep marine sediments. He is co-editor of 4 books and has published more than 150 scientific papers. He is frequently invited as panellist or Keynote lecturer in Internatonal Conferences.
