Skip to content

Fundamentals of Soil Behavior

The Fourth Edition of Fundamentals of Soil Behavior by James K Mitchell, Kenichi Soga and Catherine O’Sullivan (Wiley, 2025) includes detailed information on:

  • Soil formation, covering the earth’s crust, the geologic cycle, rock and mineral stability, weathering, and origin of clay minerals and genesis.
  • Soil mineralogy, covering atomic structure, interatomic bonding, secondary bonds, crystal notation, and clay mineral characteristics.
  • Fundamental engineering characterization of soil, covering granular soils and clay minerals.
  • Observing and quantifying soil fabric, covering qualitative and quantitative assessment of soil fabric.
  • Transport of heat, fluid, and electrical current.
  • The fundamentals of volume change, deformation, and strength properties of soils.
  • The impact of time and temperature changes on soil behavior.

The work provides an understanding of soil behavior, a fundamental requisite to a wide variety of engineering applications including foundation design and construction, earthwork construction, and geotechnical engineering.