Our friends at Deep Excavation posted about an interesting micropile case study in Northern Baltimore County for a bridge replacement project. The project consisted of 38 Micro Piles; 7†OD X 38 ft. deep including a 7 ft. rock socket, installed on a 3/1 batter, load tested to 272,000 lbs. What caught my attention is the down the hole hammer system used for installing the micropiles. The system uses a ring bit to install the casing and allow the drill string to continue beneath the bedrock elevation to construct the rock sockets. [Source: Read more about this micropile project and see additional photos at Deep Excavation. Image: Deep Excavation]
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Devil’s Slide Repair and Tunnel Bypass Presentation
[Updated Thursday May 29, 2009 – 1:00 PM PDT] Added a photo of the AIS Kaiser S2 excavator (spider excavator), and added photos of the Devil’s Slide debris dump where they have put the landslide material removed and the material from the tunnel excavation. [/Update]
Grant Wilcox, Geology Branch Chief with CALTRANS Office of Geotechnical Design West gave a presentation on the Devil’s Slide repair along PCH Highway 1 at the Southwest Geotechnical Engineer’s Conference on May 12 in Phoenix. I’ve posted about the project here before. When I saw Mr. Wilcox, I knew he looked familiar but I couldn’t figure out why. At the beginning of his presentation he made light of his being on You-Tube…then it clicked! He gave a nice overview of the history of the failures, the geology, and the tunnel project. What follows are a few quick tidbits from his talk based on my notes. (Photo via Caltrans site).
Innovative Foundation System for London Office Building
This has to be one of the most complex geotechnical engineering problems I’ve heard of for a building, if not for any kind of project. For starters, beneath the proposed 10-story office building referred to as Cannon Place lies the Cannon Street Train Station built in 1868. Also beneath the site are walls and foundations of a Roman Governor’s palace. In order to accommodate these features, the building has 21-m cantilevers at each end, with the load bearing happening over two groupings of columns at the 1/3 points. In section it looks quite like a 3-span bridge…without the abutments and stacked 10-stories tall! More after the break. (Images by New Civil Engineer) […]