Recent years have witnessed the development of computational
geomechanics as an important branch of engineering. The use of modern
computational techniques makes it possible to deal with many complex
engineering problems, taking into account many of the typical properties
of geotechnical materials (soil and rock), such as the coupled behaviour
of pore water and solid material, nonlinear elasto-plastic behaviour,
and transport processes. This book provides an introduction to these
methods, presenting the basic principles of the geotechnical phenomena
involved as well as the numerical models for their analysis, and
including full listings of computer programs (in PASCAL). The types of
geotechnical problems considered cover a wide range of applications,
varying from classical problems such as slope stability, analysis of
foundation piles and sheet pile walls to finite element analysis of
groundwater flow, elasto-plastic deformations, consolidation and
transport problems.