ODOT seems to be one of the more technically savvy geotech organizations out there. They have a state of the art database for managing nearly every aspect of their operations and data and they have make extensive use of gINT among other things.
Project Related
Geotechnical Monitoring for Tunneling Under I-5 for U-Link Light Rail, Seattle, WA
The Washington office of Rhode Island-based Geo-Instruments has been contracted to setup (and operate?) a geotechnical and structural monitoring system for the I-5 Undercrossing Project of the overall University Link light rail extension Project. Beginning […]
Links
Bimrocks
Another fine site hosted by Geoengineer.org. This site discusses Bimrocks, the “block in matrix” material that has frustrated engineers, geologists and contractors on many a project. If you’ve ever worked on a project that had […]
Miscellaneous
Mizzou Memorial Union Gets Lift from TerraThane Geotechnical Foam
Univ. of Missouri’s Historic Memorial Union, Built to Honor WWI Dead, Gets New Life with TerraThane Geotechnical Foam
MOUNT AIRY, NC—The Univ. of Missouri’s iconic Memorial Union, with its Gothic architecture and central bell tower, was built to commemorate the 117 Mizzou alumni who lost their lives in WWI, and has been under silent attack. Like all buildings built atop the ancient dry riverbeds of the tributary valleys of the Missouri River, the soil beneath is a mixture of sand, clay, and fine rock particles and highly susceptible to erosion from water. So, while hundreds of thousands of students walked the hallways of the building, water escaping steam pipes far beneath caused severe drying of the soil and destabilized it enough so that erosion created voids, or cavities in the soil, some as large as four feet. In turn, this caused the concrete slab floors atop the voids to become uneven, and the eventual danger of even greater problems loomed large.
A team of engineers went after the problem, including MU alums, Matt VanderTuig, P.E., of Bartlett & West, Jefferson City, MO, and Mark Whitehead, P.E. with extensive structural design and environmental engineering management experience. They suggested to Chris Hentges, president of SIRCAL Contracting, Jefferson City, the general contractor in charge of the job, that instead of using the older method of mudjacking, a highly involved and intrusive process of drilling large holes in the slabs—sometimes removing the slabs entirely—and pumping “mud”, ultra-heavy Portland cement-based grout, into the void, then leveling the slabs, that the university might better be served by using the newer polyurethane foam system method called “foamjacking” or “polyjacking.”
[Editor] Be sure to click through for the rest of the interesting project from GeoPrac sponsor NCFI Polyurethanes and TerraThane! [/Editor]