xii Preface
We hope that everyone reading this book not only has a chance to experi-
ence the science and art of the subject, but also the romance. Rock engi-
neering occurs deep in the earth, high in the mountains and often in the
worlds wildest places. We engineer with rocks as we create structures,
extract the primary raw materials for mankind and harness the forces of
nature. It is the romance and the passion associated with rock engineering
that has led us to communicate some of this excitement. ’Personal
experience’ is everything. So, we hope that you will have the opportunity
to experience at first hand some of the principles and applications described
in the book.
Lecture notes prepared by the authors for undergraduate and post-
graduate students at Imperial College were the basis for the book. Some of
the material, especially that of a fundamental nature, is partially based on
earlier lecture notes prepared by our predecessors in the rock mechanics
section at the college. We acknowledge this general debt with thanks and
appreciation. We are also grateful to all our students and recent colleagues
at Imperial College who have suggested improvements to the text during
the pre-publication ‘field-testing’ period over the last few years. Finally, we
thank Carol and Miles Hudson and Gwen Hamson for painstakingly
correcting and compiling the penultimate version. The final text is, of
course, our responsibility: if there is anything in the foIlowing pages that
you do not understand, it is our fault.
J. A. Hudson and J. P. Hamson
Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
University of London