The Colloquium provided a forum for presentation of new scientific results and ideas in the major areas of contemporary research in the field of porous media, on the theoretical as well as on the experimental side. These concern, in particular, transport phenomena in soil mechanics and biomechanics, location phenomena and failure in porous media, continuum- mechanical modeling, dynamics and wave propagation, micromechanical aspects in the porous media theory, drying and swelling processes, phase transitions and the effective stress concept.

The excellent scientific contributions to this volume reflect the current state of the porous media theory and provide stimulating suggestions for further development of this field of mechanics, which plays an important role in many branches of engineering, including material science, the petroleum industry, chemical engineering and soil mechanics as well as biomechanics. As there is no comparable book, the readers from the aforementioned fields of engineering and biomechanics will find in this volume a comprehensive overview of the porous media theory and some corresponding experimental results.