This book is loaded with rich and stimulating articles by a roster of brilliant scholars, reflecting some recent trends in the frontier research of geomechanics. This collection of 32 contributions stems from an international workshop on "Modern Trends of Geomechanics" held in Vienna. The contributions span a wide range of topics and an enormous range of physical scales, from micromechanics at grain scale to engineering problems at large scale; from laboratory and field testing over constitutive modelling to numerical analysis.

"This book is the condensed outcome of the "International Workshop on Modern Trends in Geomechanics" held in Vienna, Austria 27- 29, June 2005. It presents fundamental aspects of theoretical and experimental Geomechanics, bringing together important different global schools of thought. Modern Trends in Geomechanics takes stock of the state-of-the-art, reflects on the recent developments, and highlights possible future research trends in the field of Geomechanics."

General Aspects.- Energy Methods for Constitutive Modelling in Geomechanics.- Physical Background of Hypoplasticity.- Thermodynamics of Porous Continua.- Effective Stress Formulation of Unsaturated Soil Mechanics.- Progress in Binary Medium Modeling of Geological Materials.- Constitutive Modelling.- Generic Constitutive Ingredients in CSSM Models for Sands.- State Boundary Surface in Hypoplasticity.- Modelling of Bonded Soils with Unstable Structure.- An Evaluation of Different Constitutive Models to Predict the Directional Response of a Reconstituted Fine-Grained Soil.- Two Elastoplastic Models for Small and Large Strains and Their Use in Engineering Practise.- Elastic Visco-Plastic Models for the Time-Dependent Stress-Strain Behaviour of Geomaterials.- Micromechanics.- Micro-Polar Effects under Monotonic and Cyclic Shearing.- Modeling the Post-localization Regime with Local Second Gradient Models: Non-uniqueness of Solutions and Nonpersistent Shear Bands.- Confined Compression and Rod Penetration of a Dense Granular Medium: Discrete Element Modelling and Validation.- Application of Discrete Element Method to Geomechanics.- The Role of Particle Crushing in Granular Materials.- Micromechanical Study of Damage and Permeability Variation in Brittle Rocks.- Analytical and Numerical Methods.- Hydrologically Driven Slope Failure Initiation in Variably Saturated Porous Media.- A Survey of Some Mathematical Results for Highly Frictional Granular Materials.- Double-Slip and Spin: Dilatant Shear in a Reduced Cosserat Model.- The Linear Matching Method for Limit and Shakedown Analysis.- On Recent Analytical Results for Advective Transport in Fluid-Saturated Porous Media.- Granular Materials: Theory and Experiment.- Unusual Soil Behaviour and its Challenge to ConstitutiveModelling.- Histotropy of Hostun RF Loose Sand.- Incremental Nonlinearity in Phenomenological and Multiscale Constitutive Relations.- Long-term Deformations in Soils due to Cyclic Loading.- On the Factors Affecting the Formation of Shear Band Systems in Non-Cohesive Soils Under Extensional Strain.- Acceleration Waves in Hypoplasticity - 2D Analysis.- Engineering Applications.- Static and Cyclic Behavior of a Silty Sand According to Tests on Undisturbed Samples.- The Role of Analysis in Non-Displacement Pile Design.- Assessment of Uncertainties in Wellbore Stability Analysis.