TABLE OF CONTENTS In a broad sense, a geotechnical engineer is an individual who performs an engineering evaluation of earth materials. This typically includes soil, rock, and groundwater and their interaction with earth retention systems, structural foundations, and other civil engineering works. Geotechnical engineering is a subdiscipline of civil engineering and requires a knowledge of basic engineering principles, such as statics, dynamics, fluid mechanics, and the behavior of engineering materials. An understanding of construction techniques and the performance of civil engineering works influenced by earth materials is also required.
Geotechnical engineering is often divided into two categories: soil mechanics and rock mechanics.
Soil mechanics. The majority of geotechnical engineering deals with soil mechanics and in practice, the term soils engineer is synonymous with geotechnical engineer. Soil has many different meanings depending on the field of study. For example, in agronomy (application of science to farming) soil is defined as a surface deposit that contains mineral matter that originated from the original weathering of rock and also contains organic matter that has accumulated through the decomposition of plants and animals. To an agronomist, soil is that material that has been sufficiently altered and supplied with nutrients that it can support the growth of plant roots. But to a geotechnical engineer, soil has a much broader meaning and can include not only agronomic material, but also broken-up fragments of rock, volcanic ash, alluvium, aeolian sand, glacial material, and any other residual or transported product of rock weathering. Difficulties naturally...
