Soils and Civil Engineering

Paper Summary:

Soil has long been deemed important by agricultural concerns, however, it was only within the last 150 years that rail travel and, later, large-scale civic works made the study of soil important to civil engineers. The paper shows that the sub-study of civil engineering that is dedicated to the study of soil is more commonly known as soil mechanics. This field is used to assess the soil topography of land before major public or private construction projections are created.

From the Paper:

"The five main types of soil particles that are encountered by civil engineers include (in order of particle size) boulders, gravel, sand, silt cohesive, and clay. Boulders are the largest elements in soil and usually present a problem to civil engineers, but may be used in a place where the soil is otherwise soft to form a foundation upon which to build a road or other civic work. Historically, boulders were used for this purpose before it was cost-effective to introduce other materials. There are cost efficiencies in the use of boulders: they can often be found where bedrock is not near the surface of the earth, such as in the great lakes region where they were deposited during the last ice age."

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