I am grateful to the honorary editor and the editorial advisory panel for giving me the opportunity to act as a guest editor of this themed issue of Ground Improvement on ‘Contemporary Issues in Ground Improvement Techniques'. The authors of a number of papers which were submitted to the 12th Conference of the International Association for Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics (IACMAG), held in Goa, India, from 1–6 October 2008 under the theme of ‘Geomechanics in the Emerging Social & Technological Age', were invited to develop their manuscripts to meet the requirements for publication in this journal. Seven of these papers are published in this issue of Ground Improvement. I am grateful to the authors of these papers for extending their fullest co-operation in preparing the manuscripts, taking into account the comments raised during the reviewing process. I would like to acknowledge the IACMAG for approving publication of these papers in this issue of Ground Improvement.
This issue contains some very interesting analytical, experimental and field studies in the context of ground improvement. The range of topics covered in these papers include a theoretical approach to review the long-term behaviour of geogrids (Jeon, 2010); an experimental investigation of the installation damage to geogrids (Jeon and Bouazza, 2010); finite element analyses of arching in a piled embankment (Zhuang et al., 2010); and arching behaviour in reinforced fills (Potts and Zdravkovic, 2010), together with analyses of soil reinforced with extensible geosynthetics and stone columns (Deb et al., 2010) and consolidation using prefabricated vertical drains (Basu et al., 2010). In addition, interesting case histories from four ground improvement projects in Malaysia – each utilising a different technology – are described by Raju and Yandamuri (2010).
I hope that readers of Ground Improvement will find these papers provide an insight into some of the interesting current issues in the field of ground improvement.
