On behalf of the editorial panel of the International Journal of Physical Modelling in Geotechnics, welcome to the second themed issue of the journal devoted to the 8th International Conference on Physical Modelling in Geotechnics, which took place at the University of Western Australia in January 2014.
Whereas the first such issue (volume 15, issue 1) presented full-length versions of some of the award-winning papers from the conference (Garzón et al., 2015; Loli et al., 2015; Phillips and Chi, 2015) along with an article on pioneers of centrifuge modelling (Craig et al., 2015), this issue will present a number of shorter session reports summarising the contributions made at the conference to the state of the art of physical modelling in a number of key areas. These include areas of general interest
similitude, scaling and education (Lee, 2015)
physical modelling studies of soil properties and behaviour (Sasanakul and Abdoun, 2015)
and also ones themed around geotechnical engineering applications
shallow and deep foundations (Reul, 2015)
dams, embankments and slope stability (Bezuijen, 2015)
ground improvements, reinforcements and geohazards (Kitazume, 2015)
geotechnical earthquake engineering (Madabhushi, 2015)
offshore geotechnics (O'Loughlin, 2015)
The former, general interest papers provide a broad overview, discussing recent developments in the modelling of challenging geomechanical problems, such as those involving dynamic soil behaviour or unsaturated soil. Contemporary geotechnical physical modelling generally involves conducting low volumes of increasingly complex tests to achieve ever-more realism in the geotechnical processes that can be modelled. Read together, there is an emerging theme from these two papers of how realistic one could or should be in physical modelling and the related issues of soil variability and characterisation of fundamental soil properties within tests.
In terms of the application-driven contributions, it will be no surprise that foundations were a popular topic. As outlined by Reul (2015), foundations papers focussed heavily on the application of physical modelling to reducing the uncertainties associated with deep foundation types (e.g. as outlined by Randolph (2003)) under various loading regimes. There were also healthy contributions in other perennial geotechnical areas, and the reviews by Bezuijen (2015) and Kitazume (2015) also echo the issues mentioned previously regarding the level of realism that could/should be modelled – that is, whether the aim is to model a specific prototype, or whether the physical modelling is used as an experiment in its own right. The topic of geohazards included within the paper by Kitazume (2015) naturally leads on to a more in-depth review of one of the most significant of natural hazards, namely earthquakes (Madabhushi, 2015). This area has grown significantly in recent years as highly sophisticated earthquake actuators have been developed and deployed more widely around the world. An emerging theme from this area is an increasing need for physical modelling to contribute to enhancing the resilience of vulnerable structural/foundation systems, as indicated by the aftermath of recent earthquakes in New Zealand, Japan and Nepal since 2010. Offshore geotechnics is becoming an ever-more popular area of geotechnical physical modelling, as we move into deeper water and more challenging environments (e.g. polar areas) to extract oil and gas, and install increasing amounts of renewable energy capacity offshore. It is not surprising, therefore, especially given the conference's location, that offshore geotechnics was a popular area and O'Loughlin (2015) presents a highly detailed review of the work presented, which was strongly informed by current and future industry challenges.
We hope that this collection of articles will be useful both as a concise summary of the updates to the state of the art in geotechnical physical modelling (particularly for members of the community who were unable to attend the conference in person) and also as useful references for future physical modelling studies and state-of-the-art reviews. Full versions of all of the conference papers discussed can of course be found in the conference proceedings (Gaudin and White, 2014).
On behalf of the editorial panel I would like to take this opportunity to thank Prof. Christophe Gaudin for conceiving the idea of these themed issues, for coordinating their compilation and for writing the editorial for the first themed issue (Gaudin, 2015). This was a huge amount of additional work, over and above that associated with organising the conference, for which the editorial panel and I are immensely grateful. We would also like to thank CRC Press for their assistance in reproducing figures within the session reports.
Finally, I would like to draw your attention to the next themed issue (in 2016) on ‘Advanced use of image analysis in physical modelling’. I would encourage all members of the community who use image analysis in their physical modelling to submit a paper for consideration. The call for papers can be found on the ICE Virtual Library website (http://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/upload/ijpmgPIV.pdf); abstracts should be submitted to the Journals Development Editor, Dr Alison McAnena, by 30 June 2015.
