The purpose of this book is to present a broad overview of mineralogy. Although usually associated with geology, mineralogy is really a stand-alone discipline in its own right that weaves itself into such diverse fields as art, chemistry, forensic and soil science, wine production, and health-related issues, to name only a few. While this book is geared toward mineralogy and its apply in geology, it will also address mineralogy as a discipline in itself, and show you how it relates to the other sciences, art, and everyday life.

Written primarily for chemists, physicists, engineers, and students in technical colleges and universities, this book provides a first introduction to general information on mineralogy and its own properties in soils. The other properties of minerals are also presented, in the latter chapters.

This book is a product of many authors and their rich experience in researching and teaching mineralogy; in writing it, it was assumed that the reader will have a reasonable knowledge of the nature of minerals.

Structural geology deals with ways in which rocks respond to the application of deforming forces and with the structures that result from deformation. The subject is complicated by the enormous range of chemical and mineralog-ical compositions that rocks may have and the large range in physical and chemical environments in which deformation occurs.

As Earth' s crust is the most accessible part of our planet, a wealth of information on its structure and composition is available from geological observations and geophysical measurements. Its shape and composition today are, however, the result of processes occurring at different scales in time and space, rendering study of the crust a complex and challenging undertaking. Field observations and seismic data, for example, confront us with the present day structures and must, for an in-depth understanding of their origin, be reconciled with the processes of deformation that created them. Reconstructing these processes in the past is commonly hindered by lack of continuous outcrop, limited depth resolution and little to no constraints on time. Analogue and numerical models may help improve our understanding of crustal-scale processes through their ability to simulate the birth and evolution of deformational structures at different scales. In this context, the link between theory and observations makes modelling a fundamental tool for the study of processes that alter the Earth's crust. <...>

This book deals with the theories and methodologies used by engineers for the analysis and design of the main geotechnical structures.

The word structures is used here with a clear intention: indeed, the book adopts a structural outlook, inspired by the approach of the Structural Eurocodes and similar documents based on the Limit State Design philosophy.