XVth European Conference on SMGE

XVth European Conference on SMGE

11-15 September 2011, Megaron Athens International Conference Centre

On behalf of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, the Hellenic Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering is pleased to extend an invitation for participation in the 15th European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, which will take place in Athens, Greece, in September 2011.
The conference sessions will be held between Monday 12th September and Thursday 15th September, 2011. The theme of the Conference is "Geotechnics of Hard Soils - Weak Rocks".
The main objective of the conference is to provide an opportunity for engineers and scientists working in the field of hard soils and weak rocks to meet and present ideas, achievements and experiences.

During the last decades, considerable progress has been made in understanding the engineering behaviour of geomaterials that clearly fall into the field of either soil or rock mechanics, as well as in developing design and construction methods to cope with them. However, as regards those materials that fall in the "grey" area between soils and rocks, progress is even more desirable, due to their diversity, as well as difficulties and problems in their identification and classification, in their sampling and testing and in the establishment of suitable models to adequately describe their behaviour.
The purpose of the Conference is to provide an updated overview of the existing worldwide knowledge on the geological features engineering properties and behaviour of hard soils and weak rocks, as well as of the design and construction methods and problems associated with these materials.
Borderline materials will be examined, such as overconsolidated soils, siltstones and clay shales, marls, weakly cemented sandstones and conglomerates, chalk, evaporites etc, as well as highly weathered rocks in general. Characterization and classification of these materials will be considered and emphasis will be placed on the establishment of applicability limits between aspects of their engineering behaviour and on the development of new concepts for their treatment. Both static and dynamic conditions will be examined.
Special topics such as construction problems, improvement methods, erosion control and suitability of these materials for compacted fill in dams and roadworks will be of particular interest to the Conference.

For more information go to XVth European Conference on SMGE site