There is a neat little blurb in Roads and Bridges magazine on a small mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) retaining wall at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on the Coast of Virginia. The wall was designed and supplied by the Reinforced Earth Company (RECo) back in 2011. Although the wall is only 10 feet high supporting a bridge abutment, it is the route that the Antares Rockets take to reach the launch pad and eventually blast off to resupply the International Space Station. Design challenges for the wall included possible inundation with seawater, extreme live loading, and very thorough QA/QC by NASA and their designees. The live loads were 1,500 psf or about 6 times the normal highway live loading! Read more in Roads and Bridges Magazine.
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North America’s Tallest MSE Retaining Wall
[Update Jan 28, 2008] It appears as if the Port of Seattle is in some hot water for some alleged shady dealings with one of the contractors on the project. More at Seattle Times. [/Update]
Erosion Control magazine has an interesting article on MSE Walls. I think the tie-in of MSE Walls with erosion control is a little questionable (they did mention wall drainage a few times), but the article highlights several interesting projects, particularly the Seattle-Tacoma Airport or Sea-Tac Third Runway Project retaining walls. The West wall for that project is the tallest MSE Wall in North America, 130-ft at its highest point. More after the break. (Photo by Sea-Tac Airport)
MSEW 3.0 Update 13.1 from ADAMA Engineering
MSEW and ReSSA Updates
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.