Preface

Testing and experimentation are essential to support the design of civil engineering infrastructures and buildings and to understand the phenomena involved. Over the last years, testing and experimentation in civil engineering have assumed increasing importance in a wide range of applications, providing reliable information for the decision-making process during the projects’ life cycle. The experimental activities are performed in the laboratory or in situ. They typically allow an enhanced characterization of the behaviour of systems and their components, supporting the stakeholders to find more reliable and sustainable solutions. Currently, the literature lacks a contribution that provides general and foundational knowledge across these topics, and this book aims to fill this gap.
The book presents the recent advances on testing and experimentation in civil engineering, especially in the branches of materials, structures, buildings, geotechnics, transportation, hydraulics and natural resources. It is divided into two volumes, one dedicated to materials, structures and buildings and the other one dealing with geotechnics, transportation, hydraulics and natural resources. Both volumes include advances in physical modelling, monitoring techniques, data acquisition and analysis and provide an invaluable contribution for the installation of new civil engineering experimental facilities.
This volume covers the areas of geotechnics, transportation, hydraulics and natural resources and starts by pointing out the most recent advances in testing and experimentation in the main domains of geotechnics: soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering, rock mechanics and rock engineering and engineering geology. The initial part is dedicated to new developments in surveying acquisition for applied mapping and in situ geotechnical investigations. Laboratory and in situ tests to estimate the relevant parameters required to model the behaviour of rock masses and earth structures are presented next, updating the most important technological advances. The last part describes monitoring and inspection techniques designed for offshore wind foundations.
The second part of the book highlights the relevance of testing and monitoring in transportation. Full-scale accelerated pavement testing and instrumentation become even more important nowadays when, for sustainability purposes, non-traditional materials are used in road and airfield pavements. Innovation in testing and monitoring pavements and railway tracks is also developed in this part of the book. Intelligent traffic systems are the new traffic management paradigm, and an overview of new solutions is addressed.
Finally, trends in the field and laboratory measurements and corresponding data analysis are presented according to the different hydraulic domains addressed in this publication, namely maritime hydraulics, surface water and river hydraulics and urban water. These chapters of the book provide a holistic and comprehensive overview of hydraulic testing and experimentation and are addressed to professionals willing further improvement in their scientific and technical understanding and skills in this specific area of civil engineering.