Geotechnical Problem Solving

1.1

How to Use this Book

I want you the reader to be a good, if not great, problem solver. Problem solving is what engineers do, and it represents your value to society. When a client or employer pays for an engineer’s services, they are purchasing a solution to their problems. Often this process is called designing, investigating or analyzing, but in the end it all comes down to solving a problem or a series of problems.

Engineering problems involving geotechnical issues are difficult to solve, primarily because geotechnical parameters are difficult to measure, difficult to characterize and difficult to analyze. Some of the geotechnical difficulty comes from spatial variability in a large volume of soil on a building site. Some of the geotechnical problem is due to correlating field and/or laboratory measurements to the soil parameters required for analysis, and some of the problem is associated with limitations of analysis methods. I want to help you figure out how to solve geotechnical problems, and I want you to enjoy the problem-solving process.

I want to be your personal mentor, and if you have a mentor, I want to help them mentor you. If you are a student, I want you to start thinking about what is required to become a practicing engineer and to start now to develop the problem-solving tools you need.

Right from the start, I want you to accept the fact that you will never be able to include all of the physical processes involved in natural systems in your model of reality. ...