FUNDAMENTALS OF GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING is a concise combination of the essential components of Braja Das' market leading texts, Principles of Geotechnical Engineering and Principles of Foundation Engineering. The text includes the fundamental concepts of soil mechanics as well as foundation engineering without becoming cluttered with excessive details and alternatives. FUNDAMENTALS features a wealth of worked out examples, as well as figures to help students with theory and problem solving skills. Das maintains the careful balance of current research and practical field applications that has made his books leaders in this area.
Dr. Braja Das is Dean Emeritus of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at California State University, Sacramento. He received his M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Iowa and his Ph.D. in the area of Geotechnical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of several geotechnical engineering texts and reference books and has authored more than 250 technical papers in the area of geotechnical engineering. His primary areas of research include shallow foundations, earth anchors, and geosynthetics. He is a Fellow and Life Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Life Member of the American Society for Engineering Education, and an Emeritus Member of the Chemical and Mechanical Stabilization Committee of the Transportation Research Board of the National Research Council (Washington D.C.). Dr. Das has received numerous awards for teaching excellence, including the AMOCO Foundation Award, AT&T Award for Teaching Excellence from the American Society for Engineering Education, the Ralph Teetor Award from the Society of Automotive Engineers, and the Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching Excellence from the University of Texas at El Paso.
This book explains to you all the basic principles of geotechnical engineering step-by-step. It also includes excellents examples and exercises to help you to understand better each theme, but you shouldn't have problems..because it's so simple to understand.
It's excellent book for introduction to Geotechinical Engineering. Only problem I had with this book is that I was not familiar with SI units, but you will get use to it later as you solve some problems by yourelf. There is occassional typos errors with example problems and equation you may need to be careful. Other than that it is still the best book I've read in regards to Geotechincal subject. The book is generally easy to read and understand.