Books & Publications Construction of Buildings on

Expensive Soils E A Sorochan

A A Balkema, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 1991, 298 pp,

£42.00, ISBN 90 6191 115 X

Construction problems caused by expansive soils occur throughout the world. Sorochan's book has been published by Balkema as one of a series of translations of Russian geotechnical literature. The book highlights the problems caused - and great costs involved - where foundations have heaved due to expansive clays; it also questions the shortcomings in current standards for design and construction in Russia and provides recommend- ations to overcome them. The book also describes basic principles governing the expansion of argil laceous soils, including those related by soaking corrosive solutions, and outlines the methods of design construction and maintenance of buildings on such soils.

The book, although aimed at both practical and academic engineers, has been written for the academic end of the spectrum. All readers will be much frustrated by the poor quality of translation and editing, which has left the book riddled with inaccuracies, and spelling and grammatical errors. The diagrams are poorly presented and, on occasions, parameters used in the text and figures are ill-defined. In this respect little has been done to help the reader adjust to the general narrative style of presentation of Sorochan's text.

A particularly regrettable aspect is that the reader is not introduced to the writer. What are his credentials? Are we to expect the academic work of a professor

or the thesis of one of his students? By means of introduction, Sorochan

first describes the laws governing expansion and contraction of argillaceous soils by explaining in some considerable detail the range of tests carried out on a selection of clay types. The reader could be forgiven for some element of confusion due to the high technical content, which could have benefited from an introduction and been summarized in more general terms for greater clarity. Some aspects of editing, such as presentation of figures, elements of (presumably) translation and clarification of Russian test methods, would also have considerably improved technical understanding.

The book then goes on to describe the principles governing deformation of soil mass and foundations during soil expansion. The processes are illustrated by a series of case records, written in narrative form. From the technical viewpoint, the reader is again left to extract the most salient points of the presentation. The extent of detailed description of the experiments presented and their results tend to raise further questions which, once again, would have been answered by a general introduction to test methodology and aims. Later in the text further experiments are described with more clarity, which helps the reader to appreciate and understand more fully the technical and practical nature of the work Sorochan has carried out.

The extent of expansive clays throughout the world is then outlined with the characteristics of a sample of six clays from the USSR (presumably now the Commonwealth of Independent States) being described in great detail.

The presentation of laboratory test results contains a useful classification of expansive soils in terms of relative swelling characteristics; however, poor presentation and diagrams and inadequate definitions of terminology again contribute to difficulties and frustration for the reader.

On the practitioners' side, the book gives good and helpful advice to designers, who should nevertheless make sure that their soil conditions are comparable to those discussed in the text. Good examples of calculations, highlighting different problems, despite being poorly presented, at least provide the patient reader with the opportunity to appreciate fully the great deal of academic, laboratory and experimental work which has gone into the text. Once appropriately annotated by the reader, the narrative nature of the text becomes less difficult to explore. However, it still remains in the sphere of the academic reader, since from the practitioner's point of view other texts are available which set out and explain the nature of expansive soils, as well as the method of construction therein, much better.

In conclusion, this is an interesting but generally academic text, which has done little justice to the author by the lack of editing and presentation skills displayed by the publisher. Practitioners and designers would require some degree of application and effort to extract the detail they would require from the book, which, although present, would be more easily found in other texts on this subject.

Q Leiper T C Engineering Services Wolverhampton, UK

Serpula Lacrymans: Fundamental Biology and Control Strategies

D J Jennings and A F Bravery (Eds) John Wiley & Sons

ISBN 0 471 93058 X, £45

A book entitled Serpu/a Lacrymans is obviously only for the specialist. Its colloquial title would be Dry Rot but this is not a book for the generalist. For £45, the purchaser gets 13 chapters and some 220 pages, hard-bound, covering widely ranging aspects of the dry rot fungus.

Each chapter has different authorship ranging from a remedial treatment practitioner to research scientists. The broad spectrum comes across strongly when the book is read from cover to cover. However, with the possible

exception of students, this is probably not how the editors intended it to be used by most readers. It is more a book to pick at for the particular aspects of the subject that are of interest. Used in this way, the substantial degree~mpetition that occurs, particularly in the introductory and literature review sections of several of the chapters, is less obvious.

The first chapter is a highly specialized one on the taxonomy of the fungus and related species and is followed by a similar chapter on its morphology illustrated by some intriguing photo-micrographs. Two chapters on the fungus' physiology complete the 'scientific' section of the book. A chapter on the growth characteristics in building forms a link

with the next two chapters. These deal with the practical significance of the fungus and its control.

Then follows a whistle-stop survey of dry rot around the world - Switzerland,

~Denmark, Australia, Japan and~finally the USA where the dry rot ecological niche is occupied by a different fungus of similar habit. The final chapter is a tribute to the life and work of Richard Falk, the pioneer of research on dry rot.

In the introduction, the editors state their aim for a broad readership. They have certainly succeeded in compiling contributions from eminent authors on widely ranging aspects of this important organism.

Gavin Hall TRADA, UK

152 CONSTRUCTION & BUILDING MATERIALS Vol. 6 No. 3 1992