In my first editorial as the new Honorary Editor, I complained about the dearth of good, practical papers; I am pleased to say that there are early signs of a slight up-turn. At the same time, it has been noticeable that the amount of ‘Discussion’ was in decline, as a look back to copies of ICE Proceedings from the 1960s and 1970s will reveal; again, there are signs of improvement, as will be seen in this issue.
There can be few readers who have not at least heard of the Structural Eurocodes beginning to emerge from CEN, the European standardisation body. While there is a natural reluctance to turn away from codes of practices that embody the ‘tried-and-tested’ of decades, the new geotechnical design Eurocode described in this issue has some worthy features and aspirations: it attempts for the first time to provide a theoretically sound basis for the integration of geotechnical and superstructure design and it offers a design philosophy for the whole of geotechnical engineering. I hope you will read the Briefing and let me have your comments.
We have three papers proffering practical information:
Firstly, Barley et al. report a comprehensive examination of the performance and subsequent forensic study of grouted anchorages in fissured chalk in East Anglia, confirming the considerable advantages of the ‘single-bore multiple anchor’ system.
Rao and Thyagaraj then describe some laboratory experiments to stabilise that most troublesome of soils, the expansive clay. They conclude that the beneficial effects of the addition of lime-slurry are maximised by stabilisation during the dry season when desiccation cracks assist the migration of the additive.
Case studies are, of course, so important for us. Pickles et al. present valuable information on the instrumentation and monitoring of ground and structure movements and groundwater levels during deep excavation of railway tunnels and a station in reclaimed land in Hong Kong. Their work indicates the importance of understanding the interactions between tidally-influenced groundwater during draw-down for the construction of diaphragm walls.
Many of us complain about the growing amount of information that we receive, most often unsolicited. This journal routinely receives large numbers of books to review and we try to keep reasonably up-to-date with them; this issue serves as a catching-up exercise. In the past we have tried to make life a little easier for busy geotechnical engineers by publishing short overviews of the content of other geo-engineering journals; this service has lapsed of late, but we aim to resume as soon as possible. Again, I'd appreciate any views you may have about the merits of such a facility.
Richard Driscoll
