ADAMA Software has released update 10.1 for their Mechanically Stabilized Earth retaining wall design software, MSEW 3.0 as of September 29, 2009. Click through for the download link and a few of the changes.
I expect that when the new FHWA MSE Wall Manual hits the street in a few months time that we will see some significant updates with the MSEW software package.
This summer, the National Concrete Masonry Association (NCMA) will release the third edition of its Design Manual for Segmental Retaining Walls (DMSRW) along with SRWall 4.0 software for the design of segmental retaining walls. SRW walls with higher wall heights often make use of geotextile or geogrid reinforcement putting them in the category of mechanically stabilized earth retaining walls or MSE Walls. The first edition of the manual was published in 1993 and is routinely used for everything from landscaping walls to multi-tiered commercial and residential retaining walls. This summer is shaping up to be a busy one for those in the retaining wall business as the FHWA NHI 2009 MSE Wall Manual is set to be released around the same time frame as well. Read on for more info on the DMSRW. (Screen shot by Gabriela Mariscal from NCMA via CE News)
In this part 2 of 2, various types of retaining walls are examined as possible alternatives in a side-hill retaining wall situation. These include conventional wall types such as CIP walls, MSE walls, gravity walls and soldier pile walls and some less conventional approaches such as lighweight concrete fill, hybrid soil-nail and geofoam wall systems, ground improvement and micropile walls.
Part 1 of this Side Hill Retaining Wall article covered the definition, significance, problems and failure modes, investigation techniques, analysis, and construction considerations of side hill walls. A PDF version is now available for download as well. Click through for the article and the download link!
Side-hill retaining walls refer primarily to fill-walls built partway down the sides of an existing slope or embankment. They are encountered in roadway and rail widening projects as well as site development but usually in steep terrain. This article provides an overview of the problems, failure mechanisms, investigation approaches, analysis tools and wall type alternatives for these structures. Click through to read the article!
ADAMA Software has released update 9.2 for their Mechanically Stabilized Earth retaining wall design software, MSEW 3.0 as of December 12, 2008. They also released update 3.1 for ReSSA 3.0, a reinforced soil slope design program on January 15, 2009. The ReSSA update seems like a relatively minor one, but the MSEW update contains a number of updates related to AASHTO LRFD resistance factors and design methods. If you are involved in MSE wall design for highway structures using LRFD, be sure to click through for a few highlights from the update and the download link.
[Disclosure] NCS Consultants is the employer (day job) of Randy Post, the owner of this site. [/Disclosure]
Geotechnical engineers who encounter MSE retaining walls or Mechanically Stabilzed Earth Walls are undoubtedly familiar with the FHWA NHI manual on “Mechanically Stabilized Earth Walls and Reinforced Soil Slopes”. This manual, along with the NCMA manual that is used for non-transportation projects, is virtually the bible for MSE wall design. In late summer/early fall of 2009, a revised version of this manual will hit the streets. Read on for more details.
Our first article from Robert Thompson with Dan Brown and Associates. A project profile of a challenging project invoving a railroad spur for a quarry. It involved ground improvement, soil nailing, and MSE walls.
[Correction] Whoops, I think it’s North America’s tallest MSE Wall, not the world’s. Anyone know what the World’s tallest MSE wall is? [/Correction]
TheNewsTribune.com has an interesting article on the Sea-Tac third runway project and how it is nearing completion and an overview of the hurdles faced. This was a unique project from a geotechnical perspective because in order to construct the runway, North America’s tallest MSE retaining wall at 130-ft high was built. One thing I didn’t know is that the 13 million cu-yd of fill needed to construct the runway needed to pass careful inspection to make sure it was free of contaminants and similar in mineralogical composition to the on-site materials. The implications and reasoning are explained in this quote from the article:
“We had to find gravel that originated in the same place in Canada and that was transported here by the glaciers as the gravel that was here on the site,†said King.
The reasoning behind such a requirement is that water that leached through the fill would pick up minute traces of the minerals in the fill, drain into the creeks and confuse or damage native salmon returning to those creeks.
By way of ASCE SmartBrief.
ADAMA Software has released several updates to their popular MSE Wall design software and Reinforced Soil Slope software packages. Update 9 to MSEW 3.0 was posted on April 25. The changes include several updates related to the AASHTO 2007 code, and the option to use either the Simplified Method (AASHTO) or the Coherent Gravity Method (CGM). And there is now an option for considering live load (LL) in calculating Tmax for strength and connection but ignoring it for pullout.
Update 2.2 to ReSSA 3.0 was posted yesterday, May 5 after several itterations of the update were posted during the month of April. The update includes a fix for handling geometries where multiple points have the same X-coordinate but different Y-coordinates. It also allows for the specification of a vertical seismic coefficient as well as a horizontal one. And the latest updates allow the inclusion of the safety map in the printout, include modified calculations of reinforcement quantities, and allow user-selected colors for reinforcement layers that now shows up in the printout too. Click through for the download link.
The downloads page at ADAMA Engineering lists an update (Number 1) for ReSSA 3.0. I have not even heard anything about the release of version 3.0, and even other pages on their website only mention ReSSA 2.0 as the latest version. As soon as I hear anything about the new version and its additional features, I’ll be sure to post the info here. ReSSA is software for the design of reinforced soil slopes or RSS.
An update for the MSE wall design software MSEW was also released recently. This update is number 8.1 and primarily updates the way reinforcement database files are referenced, allowing the location of the database file currently in use to be stored in the project file. After recently completing a major MSE wall review using MSEW, all I can say is halleluia! I had to manually locate the database file for every single one of my old runs. This should be a nice fix.
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