ABSTRACT
Geotechnics, like any other Engineering branch, needs appropriate parameters for the design of its structures. Such parameters, collected by means of sophisticated instruments and duly confirmed by wide field experience, have been and are successfully used for design in homogeneous soils (including hard or soft rock, provided they are continuous).
Unfortunately, reality does not always offer homogeneous soils to the designer. Several materials fall in the “grey” area between hard soils and soft rocks; the negative feature of such materials is the irregularity of the structure; the usual geotechnical parameters belonging to the different components, sometimes chaotically mixed, have no practical meaning for the design.
A completely different approach is necessary: the “Soil Reinforcement” could be a possible answer to the problem of giving some sort of “homogeneity” to an heterogeneous mass, for the solution of geotechnical problems.
