Stone columns are widely used globally due to theirversatility and relative wide applicability to treat different soil and foundation situations but much of the research undertaken to date has focused on their use in soft soils. In countries like Iraq the use of stone columns is still limited from a practical point of view, chiefly as many other soil conditions are commonly encountered. These include collapsible soils: soils that are prone to relatively rapid volume compressions (through collapse of metastable fabrics) that occur due to the action of load and/or increases in water content. Recent work has opened up the possibility to use stone columns in these soils by the use of encasement, thereby overcoming the impact of loss of lateral

The study is devoted to both static and earthquake response analysis of retaining structures acted upon by lateral earth pressure. Two main approaches were implemented in the analysis, namely, the Mononobe-Okabe analytical method and the numerical Finite element procedure as provided in the ready software ABAQUS with explicit dynamic method. A basic case study considered in the present work is the bridge approach retaining walls as a part of AL-Jadiriya bridge intersection to obtain the effects of the backfill and the ground water on the retaining wall response including displacement of the retaining structure in addition to the behavior of the fill material. Parametric studies were carried out to evaluate the effects of several factors

Soil invertebrates community an important role as part of essential food chain and responsible for the decomposition in the soil, helps soil aeration , nutrients recycling and increase agricultural production by providing the essential elements necessary for photosynthesis and energy flow in ecosystems.The aim of the present study was to investigate the soil invertebrates community in one of the date palms plantation in Aljaderia district South of Baghdad, , and their relationships with some physical and chemical properties of the soil , as Five randomly distributed replicates of soil samples were collected monthly. Invertebrates samples were sorted from the soil with two methods, direct method to isolate large invertebrates and indirec