On behalf of the Editorial Board of Geotechnical Research (GeoRes), we welcome submissions to the themed issue currently being championed by the journal, namely ‘Recent advances in biogeoscience applications in geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering’. Two papers by Omoregie et al. (2023a, 2023b) have already been published online ‘ahead of print’ for this themed issue. Submissions are welcome before 31 December 2023.
As a gold Open Access (OA) journal, GeoRes charges authors an article publication charge (APC). However, this helps maximise the impact of research articles and knowledge-based case studies on a wide range of geotechnical challenges. To support prospective authors and readers, GeoRes offers an APC waiver that presents an excellent opportunity for you to submit to our journal. For those who miss the APC waiver, there are still various discount options available, particularly for researchers from the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) countries. This discount policy aims to alleviate the economic barriers to disseminating research output from developing countries.
The journal is committed to adding keywords and symbols of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) to published contents as a meaningful way to encourage the practice of sustainability.
The themes of field investigation and forensic engineering in case studies are being emphasised in this issue.
Lagerlund et al. (2023) performed detailed laboratory tests to investigate the remediation of dam core using low-mobility grout containing gravel, sand, limestone filler, bentonite, plasticiser and water to study the effect of permeation during grouting works to prevent suffusion, which typically occurs in widely or gap-graded soils. Suffusion is undesirable because it increases the hydraulic conductivity of the dam core and thus encourages seepage through the dam. Through the experiments, it was found that a higher amount of paste in the low-mobility grout material and additional grouting pressure improved the permeation in coarser materials. Unsurprisingly, grout injection into the least coarse-grain material caused an uplift, denoting a lack of grout penetration into the soil.
Moghadam Joybari et al. (2023) investigated the behaviour of skirted foundations under static load conditions through the use of three-dimensional (3D) finite-element analyses. Skirts to foundation systems are usually installed to form a chamber in which the soil is enclosed to enhance the beneficial effects of confinement to the underlying soil that has the capacity to increase the foundation bearing capacity. The skirt lengths investigated were 0.25, 0.5B, 1B and 1.5B of the width the of the footing (B). It was found that the bearing capacity increased when (i) skirts were longer, thus pushing the pressure bulbs deeper into the more competent soil, (ii) greater compaction was provided to drive the longer skirts into deeper grounds (more confinement) and (iii) skirt walls were thicker, causing remoulding and subsequently soil strengthening over time. Undoubtedly, ground settlement was observed to decrease with increasing bearing capacity.
Jensen and Jefferies (2023) studied the consolidation behaviour of San Francisco Bay’s mud over a period of 43 years, where primary as well as secondary consolidations (creep) have been observed when iterative numerical modelling using large-stain theory was deployed. The Bay Mud exhibited a high void ratio, thus describing its high consolidation nature. It was also suggested that clay ageing was a contributing factor to this observation, but due to its depositional condition during accretion causing it to have residual fabric that presents itself as having the effect of a pre-consolidation pressure.
We thank the authors, reviewers and Editorial Board members for their contributions to our journal.
