Expanded Clay Aggregate in Engineering: Crushing Behaviour and Design Implications

Expanded Clay Aggregate in Engineering: Crushing Behaviour and Design Implications offers the first comprehensive, multi-scale analysis of crushing in expanded clay aggregate (ECA), a widely used but poorly understood engineered material. The book challenges conventional assumptions that have long guided the design and application of ECA and presents a rigorous, mechanistic understanding of how this manufactured material responds to stress. Through a systematic exploration of crushing initiation, propagation, and size-dependent effects, the book reveals how ECA’s distinctive cellular structure produces behaviour fundamentally different from that of traditional geomaterials. Reviewed by leading experts in the field of geotechnical engineering and positioned at the intersection of granular mechanics, geotechnical engineering, and materials science, the book is an essential read for researchers and graduate students working on crushable materials, as well as practitioners seeking reliable, performance-based design approaches for lightweight aggregates.

Both scientifically rigorous and practically oriented, Expanded Clay Aggregate in Engineering establishes a new foundation for predicting, controlling, and optimising the behaviour of expanded clay aggregate in modern engineering applications.

Adel Kmema is a Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering at the Higher Institute of Technological Studies of Rades, Tunisia. He is a member of the Civil Engineering Laboratory (LGC) at the National School of Engineers of Tunis. His research investigates the multi-scale mechanical behaviour of granular materials, with a specific focus on particle crushing in lightweight aggregates. He has developed novel experimental methodologies, including color-coded grain tracking and strain-threshold testing, to directly observe crushing evolution from individual grain fracture through assembly-scale response. His work on expanded clay aggregate has established fundamental force-size relationships, quantified energy dissipation through crushing, and developed modified Weibull frameworks incorporating coordination number effects. His research bridges the gap between micromechanical understanding and practical geotechnical design.

Elhem Ben Ammar is a Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering at the Higher Institute of Technological Studies of Rades (ISET Rades), Tunisia, and a member of the Civil Engineering Laboratory (LGC) at the National School of Engineers of Tunis (ENIT), Tunisia. Her research and publications focus on granular materials and geographic information systems (GIS). She is actively involved in teaching activities in civil engineering. She is currently working within a collaborative framework on the study of the effect of fragmentation on the behaviour of granular materials.