A 40 foot diameter sinkhole 30 feet deep opened up beneath the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and swallowed 8 of the Corvettes on display. The museum’s security company alerted the staff members […]
Hersheypark is a famous amusement park in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The park looked to GeoPrac sponsor Nicholson Construction for micropile foundations for their new $12.5M Storm Runner roller coaster. The ground conditions consisted of highly variable […]
If Wolf Creek Dam in Kentucky fails, $6 billion in flood damage is projected to occur downstream. A dam foundation remediation project at Wolf Creek Dam to fix seepage and Karst solutioning problems is a […]
An arena being built for the Philadelphia Flyers’ minor league affiliate hockey team will be founded on micropiles to mitigate possible sinkhole problems in the limestone bedrock. The arena in located at the site of […]
The US Army Corps’ Wolf Creek Dam foundation remediation project in is the largest and most complex foundation remediation project in the world according the the contractor PM. It involves the installation of a massive […]
Pittsburgh, PA – June 2, 2011 – Missouri’s Interstate 44 is considered one of the most frequently traveled highways in the central United States. In early March of 2011, Nicholson Construction was contacted to perform an emergency response grouting operation on the Gasconade Bridge, part of I-44 westbound, over the Gasconade River in Laclede County.
During construction of the drilled shaft foundations for Temporary Bent No. 6, it was determined that voids were present both beneath and adjacent to the north footing for Intermediate Bent No. 6. Test borings by MoDOT indicated that the void varied in depth from zero to five feet, but the horizontal extents were unknown upon Nicholson’s arrival to the site. [Editor] Click through for the rest of the press release from GeoPrac.net sponsor Nicholson Construction. [/Editor]
On April 26, a sinkhole opened up in a busy Beijing street in China’s capital city, swallowing up a truck. According to news reports, the driver and passenger jumped out of the vehicle before it […]
Tropical Storm Agatha that hammered Guatemala over the weekend also was likely a catalyst in the final collapse of a massive 100-ft wide by at least 200-ft deep sinkhole in Guatemala City. The sinkhole swallowed […]
On June 11, 2002, a 150-foot wide and 60-foot deep sinkhole opened up in Pine Hills, Florida and came within a few feet of two 3-story appartment buildings. Geotechnical and Environmental Consultants (GEC) was contacted by the owner of the site to design emergency temporary and permanent stabilization measures to protect the buildings. The sinkhole mitigation began with a chemical stabilization of the soil using an injected sodium silicate chemical grout (incidentally, that work was performed by John N. Puder, Inc., recently acquired by Moretrench) to stabilize the sands underneath the buildings and adjacent to the sinkhole. After some GPR surveys, borings and other investigations, final sinkhole repair consisted of a 200-foot long wall omprised of interlocked 36-inch diameter steel tubular piles that extended to a depth of 50 feet. They were driven by Giken America Corp. using the press-in method which helped to avoid damage to the adjacent buildings. The entire stabilization was completed within 1-month of the initial sinkhole collapse! Click through for this fascinating video. (Photo credit Giken America Corp. by way of GEC)
The site for the new Harrison County Hospital, approximately 25-miles west of Louisville, Kentucky had 15 sinkholes formed by limestone dissolution, a geomorphologic process referred to as Karst topography. There were a number of geotechnical engineering and geological engineering challenges associated with the characterization, excavation, backfilling, foundation engineering and other mitigation measures as described by Peggy Hagerty Duffy, P.E. in her article entitled “Karst and Complications” in the August 2008 issue of Civil Engineering Magazine (Duffy, 2008b).
Mitigation measures for the sinkholes included use of graded filters with geotextiles, careful inspection of rock socket foundations along with pilot holes and careful geotechnical inspection throughout the construction process. One particularly interesting aspect of the project is that several of the sinkholes were used as drainage facilities to receive surface water runoff. Read on for a summary of this interesting article. (Photo of sinkhole in Karst Topography being used as a drainage feature, from Duffy (2008b), Civil Engineering Magazine)
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