**Table 1.**

*Impact measure of the publications.*

#### *3.3.5 Three-factor analysis*

#### *3.3.5.1 Keywords, authors and countries*

A more visualized representation of prolific scholars vis-à-vis their countries and the specific area of interest in the field of finite element analysis and weak soil is shown in **Figure 5**. This Figure is a three-field plot of article contributions by countries, authors, and themes within the field of fracture mechanics of soil. The rightmost column represents active countries, the rightmost column shows scholars' names contributing from those countries, and the middle column represents the most used keywords by the authors. The number of occurrences of these keywords forms what we refer to as 'themes' in this study. Note the height of the boxes and the thickness of the connecting lines. On the side of countries, China has more authors' affiliations, with 1250 authors connected to the country, followed by Australia, United States and United Kingdom with 65, 49, and 12 connections. Observing the thickness of the line leading from the countries to authors, we can see that Wang Y and Li X remain the giant contributors from China. In India, Kodikara J remains the prolific writer.

The emphasis is placed on the height of each box and thickness of the connecting lines; the taller the box, the more significant; and the thicker the lines' correlation, the more information or volume of work was produced.

#### *3.3.5.2 Thematic evolution of keywords*

**Figure 6** demonstrates the evolution of keywords in two different stages (2000–2010 and 2011–2023). It is noticed that most of the research in the second stage relates to fracture, cracks and soil mechanics. This is supported by the height of the boxes and the thickness of the connecting lines during the period 2011–2023, which

**Figure 5.** *A three-field plot of countries, authors and themes.*

*Fracture Mechanics Application in Soil Strength Identification: A Scientometric Analysis DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112451*

#### **Figure 6.**

*Thematic evolution map of keywords from 2000 to 2023 with respect to fracture mechanics and soil.*

manifests that the research focus on these three terms is relatively more. Most of the research works will start with a keyword and will evolve into multiple other keywords and progress via other keywords, hence understanding keyword variation dynamics is important to understand the research progress in a domain. Concerned with this study, keywords such as "rocks", "failure analysis", "mathematical models", "soil mechanics", "compaction grouting" and "fracture mechanics" defines the research work being undertaken by researchers across the globe.

#### *3.3.6 Thematic map*

Another analysis conducted in this study is the thematic map of fracture mechanics approach for engineered soil development. The aim of conducting a thematic map is to gain insight into the field's current status and what its future sustainability holds. This analysis is useful in providing knowledge to researchers and stakeholders regarding the potential of future research development of thematic areas within a field.

Thematic analysis takes clusters of keywords plus and their interconnections to obtain themes. These themes are characterized by properties (density and centrality). The density is represented on the vertical axis, while centrality takes the horizontal axis. Centrality is the degree of correlation among different topics; density measures the cohesiveness among the nodes. These two properties measure whether certain topics are well developed or not, important, or not. The higher the number of relations a node has with others in the thematic network, the higher the centrality and importance, and it lies within the essential position in the network. Similarly, cohesiveness among a node, which represents the density of a research field, delineates its capability to develop and sustain itself. In **Figure 7**, we provide the thematic map of the field studied in this paper, which is divided into four quadrants (Q1 to Q4) and sustain itself. In **Figure 7**, we provide the thematic map of the field studied, which is divided into four quadrants (Q1 to Q4).

The upper right quadrant (Q1) represents the driving themes, the lower right quadrant (Q4) denotes the underlying themes, the upper left quadrant (Q2) represents the very specialized themes, and the lower left quadrant (Q3) denotes emerging or disappearing themes. Notably from the figure, a theme such as "Fracture Mechanics,"

#### **Figure 7.**

*Thematic map: Q1 contains the main theme, Q2 contains highly developed and specialized themes building ties with the leading theme, Q3 contains disappearing or emerging themes, Q4 consists of foundational and transversal themes.*

placed in Q1, is well developed and capable of structuring the research field. In other words, fracture mechanics remains the leading theme within the field. Themes such as "soil mechanics," "soil mechanics", "soil testing" and "soils compressive strength" seen in Q4 are the basics and are critical for the field's development. Themes in Q2 have developed internal bonds but still of marginal contribution to the development of the field of fracture mechanics. This finding suggests that themes in Q2 such as bending strength, silicon carbide and carbon fibers are potential topics that need to be more connected to fracture mechanics. Scholars in this field may explore these themes to provide twenty-first-century solutions in the field of finite element analysis.

The theme in Q3, "seepage", "mechanical properties" and "fracture toughness" appears to be emerging but shows cohesiveness towards the themes of Q4, indicating that some of its components are basic and necessary for developing the field of Fracture Mechanics of soil. The thematic analysis suggests that more efforts are needed to develop themes deformation," to establish more ties with "Fracture mechanics of soil."

#### *3.3.7 Thematic focus of the field of fracture mechanics of soil*

#### *3.3.7.1 Keywords analysis, co-occurrence network, and trend topics*

This section investigates the themes that dominate the research landscape of fracture mechanics of soil and areas that scholars have focused on during the period 2000–2023.

Besides, the study also attempts to gain insight into whether there is a shift in the topic of discussion among scholars within the field. We first began by analyzing keywords plus and their frequency of occurrences. Next, we carried out an analysis of keywords dynamics, trending topics, co-occurrence network, and thematic areas of the field.

*Fracture Mechanics Application in Soil Strength Identification: A Scientometric Analysis DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112451*

#### **Figure 8.**

*A visualized word-cloud of frequently used keywords in the finite element analysis and weak soil, these are among the highest number of repetitive keywords within the field.*

Analysis of keywords used by authors in publications is an essential tool for investigating trending topics and scholars focus on the field [7]. This analysis is so because publication keywords help us to identify the topic and focus of that publication quickly. The word-cloud in **Figure 8** shows frequently used keywords in this work. Using this word cloud, one can understand the various keywords authors used to define their research related to fracture mechanics approach on soil development, thickness of the keywords is related to the high frequency of its usage among the articles analyzed in this research.

**Figure 9.** *Visualized word dynamics of keywords.*

Specifically, **Figure 9** shows the visualized word dynamics of the used keywords plus. Soils became one of the most used keywords from 2000 and grew quickly until 2023. This finding signified that *fracture* became the most discussed topic as an aspect of fracture mechanics among scholars within those years. However, frequently used keywords such as *rock mechanics, cracks, soil testing, failure (mechanical) and finite element method* are also continued to increase (see **Figure 9**). This finding suggests that the field of wave propagation will continue to be researched these prevailing aspects.
