Natural soft soils are very complex materials. As construction activities increasingly take place in poor ground conditions, ground improvement is often required. However, design practices for ground improvement were for long at best crude and conservative, and at worst unsafe. Although new construction and field observation techniques have been developed to ensure that geotechnical structures such as embankments, tunnels and deep excavations can be built safely under these difficult conditions, design is still predominantly based on empirical rules and simplifying assumptions.

Since 2000 increased computer power has made systematic numerical studies utilising the 3D finite element method more and more possible. This enabled the investigation of complex soil-structure interaction mechanisms associated with ground improvement problems. The EC-funded Research Training Network Soft Clay Modelling for Engineering Practice (SCMEP), was set up to develop improved constitutive and numerical models to assist in geotechnical design on soft clays, and made significant advances in theory backed up with substantial experimental programmes (2000-2004). The EC-funded Marie Curie Research Training Network AMGISS (Advanced Modelling of Ground Improvement on Soft Soils) continued the research by the SCMEP network, focussing on modelling ground improvement systems. The aim of the AMGISS network is to develop advanced numerical modelling techniques for analysing the coupled hydro-mechanical behaviour of ground improvement systems on soft soils utilising advanced constitutive modelling, physical modelling and 2D, enhanced 2D and 3D numerical modelling techniques.

The motivation of the 2nd International Workshop on Geotechnics of Soft Soils, organised by the AMGISS network (3-5 September 2008, Glasgow, Scotland), was to bring together practitioners and academics to discuss recent developments in soft soil modelling, focussing on ground improvement. This volume is a collection of papers from the workshop, and discusses the state-of-the-art in soft soil modelling and design, with particular emphasis on ground improvement applications, involving contibutions both from academia and industry. The topics included cover: Modelling (constitutive modelling, numerical modelling, and physical modelling), Design and Application (focusing mainly on embankments and foundations), and Ground Improvement (preloading and consolidation methods, column methods, piles and micropiles, and other ground improvement methods).

Geotechnics of Soft Soils - Focus on Ground Improvement will prove to be invaluable to research students, academics and practitioners, working in geotechnical design on soft soils.

Installation effects in geotechnical engineering contains the proceedings of the International Conference on Installation Effects in Geotechnical Engineering (Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 24-27 March 2013), the closing conference of GEO-INSTALL (FP7/2007-2013, PIAG-GA-2009-230638), an Industry-Academia Pathways and Partnerships project funded by the European Community from the 7th Framework Programme. Infrastructure construction involves the installation of structural elements, such as piles and various ground improvement techniques for soils and rocks. The installation process itself can be quasi-static (for example jacked piles) or dynamic (vibratory methods, such as stone columns and driven piles), and generally involves very large deformations and changes in pore pressure. The fact that natural soils are complex geomaterials, exhibiting structure and rate-dependent behaviour, makes analysis of such problems yet more challenging. In particular, the influence of installation on key design parameters, such as mobilised strength at the soilstructure interface and soil stiffness, is difficult to quantify and, as yet, impossible to model. Numerical analyses using the standard Finite Element Method (FEM) are unable to produce accurate descriptions of large deformation problems due to excessive mesh distortions and novel techniques need to be developed. Installation effects in geotechnical engineering presents the latest developments in monitoring, analysing and managing installation effects in geotechnical engineering, and covers aspects ranging from large deformation modelling to real field applications. Topics include: computational methods, constitutive modelling, installation effects, offshore constructions and foundations, soil improvement, and soil-structure interaction. The book is aimed at academics, researchers and practitioners in geotechnical engineering and geomechanics, and at practicing civil engineers.