Introduction

Classical soil mechanics often encounters challenges in precisely capturing the complexities of skeleton-degradable soils, characterized by intricate interactions among biochemical reactions, physical transformations, and mechanical transport mechanisms. This chapter delineates the background, purpose, and structure of the book. For the first time, this book presents a comprehensive soil degradation‒consolidation theory, surpassing the constraints of common classical soil mechanics assumptions, such as those considering a constant solid-phase mass and disregarding consolidation effects on degradation, within the realm of environmental engineering. The ultimate goal of this book is to tackle scientific challenges in the integrated analysis of solid‒liquid‒gas phase transformations, skeleton deformations, liquid‒gas flows, and solute migration within skeleton-degradable soils.