The I-10 Twin Spans bridges were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, but the concrete rubble from the structures will be used inside gabion mattresses to line a 7.8-mile stretch of the Lake Borgne shoreline to reduce […]
I came across these great photos of geofoam use on the WSDOT SR 519 project which has been in service over a year now. They needed geofoam fill on the east and west bridge approaches […]
Drill and Blast and Tunnel Boring Machine are two common types of tunnel construction methods. But roadheaders have been around for many years, getting their start in the coal mining industry. So where do they […]
From the AZGS Document Repository: These guidelines provide professionals evaluating site-specific conditions in areas known or suspected to be subsiding with a standardized minimum level of investigation for land-subsidence and earth-fissure hazards. The guidelines do […]
August 11, 2011 MOUNT AIRY, NC—Gary Molstre, owner of Mudpumpers Mudjacking, Moorehead, MN, says there is no chance they are changing the company name, but they are definitely changing the material they use to repair highways and bridges to an engineered polyurethane foam system and they’ve coined a term for it: “foamjacking”.
Mudjacking, also called slab jacking, concrete lifting, concrete raising, and slab leveling, is the traditional method of fixing damaged concrete highways and bridge approach panels. The process was developed in the 1930s and involves pumping “mud” (everything from clay, sand, and loam, to Portland cement, fly ash, lime, casting plaster, and hot asphalt have been used) beneath concrete slabs that have become uneven, sunken, and/or pulled away from bridge approaches due to soil erosion and/or the soil being compacted or compressed from the sheer weight of the slab. Mudjacking involves drilling holes in the concrete and pumping “mud” and pressure beneath to lift the slab to its original place and keep it there. [Editor] Click th rough for the rest of the press release. [/Editor]
August 16, 2011 MOUNT AIRY, NC—NCFI, a U.S. company, is aiding the world geo-technical market by launching a Website for a line of new generation polyurethane products for geo-technical uses.
The Website, www.terrathane.com, provides companies working in the geotechnical field (i.e. concrete highway lifting, concrete slab raising, pipeline and tunneling, cavity filling, soil stabilization, pole setting, mine reclamation) a single online resource for choosing the very best product for their specific uses, educational material, and equipment and training resources. [Editor] Click through for the rest of the press release. [/Editor]
Newest addition to the COMSOL Multiphysics® product suite targets geotechnical applications within oil & gas and civil engineering with tailored material models to study plasticity, deformation, and failure of soils and rocks as well as their interaction with concrete and man-made structures.
BURLINGTON, MA (August 18, 2011) — COMSOL, Inc., today introduced the Geomechanics Module, enabling the fast-growing community of COMSOL Multiphysics users to harness its powerful simulation environment for geotechnical and civil-engineering applications such as slope stability evaluation and failure prediction of tunnels, retaining structures, and excavations. The Geomechanics Module provides tailored interfaces for studying plasticity, deformation, and failure of soils and rocks, as well as their interaction with concrete and human-made structures. The Module, which comes with a variety of material models for soils, builds off of the Structural Mechanics Module add-on for the company’s flagship simulation software, COMSOL Multiphysics, and offers the ability to combine analyses with all other COMSOL modules seamlessly. [Editor] Click through for the rest of the press release. [/Editor]
As the authors of the above-titled report note, the ecosystem and the built environment are inextricably linked, and understanding the interdependence of the two is the key to sustainability in geotechnical engineering, and all civil engineering. Although I am curious how they came to this conclusion, they state that geotechnical engineering is "the most resource intensive of all the civil engineering disciplines." Assuming they are correct, this is a sobering thought for all of us as designers. [Editor] Click through for more on sustainability in geotechnical engineering. [/Editor]
The newly announced Kingdom Tower is slated to be the World’s tallest when it is completed in 2016 in Jeddah, Saudia Arabia. Part of the $20B Kingdom City development, the tower will stand 3,280 feet tall and cost $1.2B itself. The architect is Adrian Smith who was also the lead architect on the current tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE. You can see from the rendering (and others in the article) that the Kingdom Tower structure has a similar triangular footprint compared to the Burj Khalifa.
There is an excellent discussion of the geotechnical challenges, and really a synopsis of the entire foundation design process for the Kingdom Tower in the article from George Leventis, President of Langan International which is providing the geotechnical design… [Editor] Read on for more info on the foundations for the Kingdom Tower [/Editor]
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