Int. J. Rock Mech. Min. ScL & Geomech. Abstr. Vol. 15, p. 87 © Pergamon Press Ltd 1978. Printed in Great Britain

Book Review

Piles in Weak Rock--edited by Jeremy P. P. Blanc. Institution of Civil Engineers, London. Hard cover, 256 pp. U.K. £5.50, Overseas £7.00.

This volume collects together a number of papers and the reported discussion of a meeting jointly organised by the British Geotechnical Society and the Piling Group of the Institution of Civil Engineers held in May 1976. All the papers, with the exception of a review paper by Hobbs entitled "Behaviour and design of piles in chalk" were previously published as a symposium report in the March 1976 issue of Geotechnique."

The paper by Hobbs occupies 27 pages and the discussions occupy a further 57 pages; thus a subscriber to Geotechnique will find only 84 pages of new material in this volume. The discussions are con- veniently arranged in three sections dealing with piles in chalk, piles in rocks other than chalk and testing, instrumentation and construc- tion. The review paper by Hobbs serves as an introduction to the

first section of discussion while shorter contributions by Tomlinson and by Cooke introduce the other two sections.

The majority of the papers and discussions deal with observations of the behaviour of full-scale piles in loading tests and, in many instances, data on the mechanical behaviour of the rocks in question are given in the form of laboratory or in-situ test results. Thus the papers and discussions provide much useful information relating pile behaviour to site investigations but the scope is strictly limited to weak rocks.

The book has the distinct flavour of the proceedings of a confer- ence but it is very well produced with the clear printing and diagrams familiar to subscribers of Geotechnique. Its appeal however will prob- ably be limited to those engineers who are often concerned with the design and construction of piles in weak rock and then they will have to dig into the book for the information they require.

J.H.A.

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