Editorial

In this issue of Geotechnical Engineering we publish the final instalment of Dr Penman's essay on the UK's Building Research Station (BRS), covering the period from the 2nd to the 4th International Conferences on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering. Find out what disaster beset the BRS's mobile laboratory at Daer embankment dam in Scotland and how the r_u > 1 problem was investigated.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this series of articles about the BRS from one of its most prominent and colourful characters. We are very grateful to Dr Penman for providing us with such a fascinating account of one of the leading geotechnical institutions in the UK, if not the world.

It gives us great pleasure to publish one of the winning papers from the Institution of Civil Engineers Hong Kong Association's 2001 paper competition, which was organised by its Graduates and Students Division. Siew-Wei Lee's paper, on the use of compensation grouting on the London Docklands Light Railway Lewisham Extension twin-tunnelling project, is a fine example of an interesting story well told.

Next up, Broughton et al. describe the geotechnical engineering works associated with the hydraulic skirt extraction/jacking of the Maureen gravity platform (see Fig. 1 and front cover), together with a summary of the results from the actual extraction process. The authors believe that the confidence gained from the successful execution of these works may lead to less conservative approaches being adopted for future platform removals.

The estimation of active and passive earth pressures on retaining walls is a problem of considerable significance to practising engineers. Soubra and Macuh present a kinematical method of determining earth pressure coefficients, based on the upper bound theorem. The implementation of their method in a spreadsheet provides a simple way of using the theory in routine design.

Finally, Winter and Clarke discuss the problems caused by pulverised fuel ash (PFA) being treated as a manufactured material in current specifications for highways works. The authors argue the case for a new method-based specification for PFA, which would encourage its use as a general fill and so decrease the need to dispose of it in landfill sites.

In this issue, we have discussion by Thomas of Hellawell et al.'s paper on metros under construction around the world1 and discussion by Ting of Catney and Lynch's paper on air sparging.2 

From this issue onwards, we aim to bring you regular reviews of publications of interest to practising geotechnical engineers in our new section entitled ‘Monitor’. We kick off with a summary of papers that have appeared in the Japanese journal Soils and Foundations and a round-up of papers that have recently appeared in Gaotechnique.

Our apologies to Alan Powderham for printing in the January issue an incomplete cross-section in Figure 7 of his paper on the observational method.3 The corrected figure is reprinted in this issue. An apology also to Trevor Addenbrooke for publishing incomplete affiliations in his paper.4 

Despite several pleas by me for positive or negative feedback on the changes we have made to the journal over the past year or so, we are still only getting anecdotal evidence that we are making the sort of improvements that you, the readership, would like to see.

A welcome exception to this is the following email received from Dr Penman regarding January's issue:

If you are interested in raising an issue within the pages of this journal, please contact me (via andrew.bond@geocentrix.co.uk) to discuss the best way to get your ideas published.

We have briefings by Prof. John Atkinson entitled ‘What is the matter with geotechnical engineering?’ and by Prof. Kerry Rowe on excavations in gassy soils, plus papers on the performance of in situ auger mixing treatment of a contaminated site (part 4 of Al-Tabbaa's series of articles on this topic) and a comparison of tube-a-manchette and lance grouting to assist tunnel excavation through chalk. Make sure you get your copy.