Geotechnical News • June 2012
29
GEOTECHNICAL INSTRUMENTATION NEWS
Book Review
New “ICE Manual of Geotechni-
cal Engineering”, edited by John
Burland, Tim Chapman, Hilary
Skinner and Michael Brown.
Review by John Dunnicliff
The UK Institution of Civil Engineers
has recently published a two-volume
manual, with more than 100 chapters
on comprehensive aspects of geotech-
nical engineering, each written by one
or more experienced practitioners or
academicians.
The manual was originally intended
for people in the early stages of their
careers, but it’s now clear that it
should also prove valuable to all geo-
technical engineering professionals.
From one of the editors to me: “It
has been a labour of love, trying to
create something that will assist the
whole profession for many years to
come! I’m proud of our industry—
the amount of concerted effort from
a huge number of people has been
superb—and I think the outcome will
be very beneficial for geotechnical
engineering”.
In my view the full manual is a
‘must have’ for the libraries of all
firms which practice geotechnical
engineering. The layout of the 1,500
page text and figures is clear and
visually appealing, with numerous
cross-references among chapters. The
more I read, the more impressed I
am! Specialists should have their own
copies of relevant individual chapters.
Although written for the UK scene,
this in no way diminishes its value
elsewhere.
Because this text is part of GIN, I’ll
now focus on the two chapters about
instrumentation. Much of the con-
tent is an update of a book with a red
cover, with enormous help in Chapter
94 from Allen Marr, Geocomp Corpo-
ration, Acton, MA and Jamie Standing,
Imperial College London.
The chapters are:
• Chapter 94. Principles of geotech-
nical monitoring. There are three
sections:
—
—
Benefits of geotechnical moni-
toring.
The principal technical
reasons for recommending
a geotechnical monitoring
program for a project are
described. A common feature
of these technical reasons is
that monitoring programs gen-
erally save money.
—
—
Systematic approach to plan-
ning monitoring programs
using geotechnical instrumen-
tation.
This 20-step sermon
will be familiar to many
readers of GIN. It includes the
vital topic of how to assign
tasks for the construction
phase such that high quality
data are obtained. The sermon
is followed by an example of
planning a monitoring program
for an embankment on soft
ground.
—
—
General guidelines on execu-
tion of monitoring programs,
including all tasks during the
construction phase.
• Chapter 95. Types of geotechnical
instrumentation and their usage.
There are two sections:
—
—
Types of geotechnical instru-
mentation
. Instruments are
described for monitoring four
parameters: groundwater pres-
sure, deformation, load and
strain in structural members
and total stress. The section
includes applications, descrip-
tions of how each instru-
ment works, with schematic
diagrams, and various other
details intended to help the
user.
—
—
Usage of Instrumentation.
The
section indicates the general
role of instrumentation for 12
types of construction proj-
ects. For each project type a
table summarizes the possible
geotechnical questions that
may lead to the use of instru-
mentation, and indicates some
of the types of instruments that
can be considered for helping
to provide answers to those
questions. Here’s an example
of those tables, for internally
braced excavations.
Information is on
library.com/icemanuals/MOGE. The
hyperlinks at the left indicate the
chapter titles and contributing authors.
The manual, ISBN 9780727736529, is
available in hard copy in two volumes
for US$350, $185 for a single vol-
ume. It is also available on-line as an
e-book, with individual chapters for
$30 each. Ordering information is:
,
E:
,
T: (978) 829-2544.
