In four separate contracts, up to $331 million in levee reconstruction projects were awarded last week by the USACE to rebuild levees in some of the hardest hit areas from Hurricane Katrina, including St. Bernard […]
Seven new design contracts were issued today for the Crossrail project including four central London Stations and three significant portals. According to the New Civil Engineer, the project is being called "Europe’s Largest Construction Project". […]
This has to be one of the most complex geotechnical engineering problems I’ve heard of for a building, if not for any kind of project. For starters, beneath the proposed 10-story office building referred to as Cannon Place lies the Cannon Street Train Station built in 1868. Also beneath the site are walls and foundations of a Roman Governor’s palace. In order to accommodate these features, the building has 21-m cantilevers at each end, with the load bearing happening over two groupings of columns at the 1/3 points. In section it looks quite like a 3-span bridge…without the abutments and stacked 10-stories tall! More after the break. (Images by New Civil Engineer) […]
In this ENR.com video, a US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) project to protect Grand Isle Louisiana from the erosional effects of a large storm surge is described. 5.7 miles of sand filled geotextile tubes or geotubes 30-ft in diameter are used to form the core of a dune along with a geotextile erosion apron held in place by anchor tubes. The design is aimed to prevent devastating erosion in the event that a large storm surge overtops the protective dunes. The sand is screened on site and mixed with water to form a slurry that is pumped into the tube. Once the tubes are in place, additional sand will be placed over the top and the dune revegetated. If the topping sand is eroded away, the Corps hopes the fix will be easier to perform with the tubes. Click through for the video.
The Devil’s Slide Tunnel project is on schedule and on budget according to a news story at ABC7News.com from earlier in June. The video (shown after the break) has a few nice shots showing rock bolting, soil nailing at the portals, and the geologic mapping and laser scanning that happens at the tunnel face.
I also came across a very neat article about how the Ocean Shore Railroad Company was the first to try to cut into the slope along what is now PCH 1 at the Devil’s Slide back in the early 1900s. They were trying to connect the then rural farming community of Half-Moon Bay with San Francisco. The railroad fought the reoccurring landslide and serious rockfalls. Ocean Shore Railroad went bankrupt in 1922 and pulled up its rails, making room for the current highway. (Photo at left from halfmoonbaymemories.com)
Fortunately nobody was seriously injured as a drilled shaft rig toppled over at a construction site in Maroochydore, Queensland, Australia. No word on what caused the accident at the building site. The operator was inside […]
ADSC published a summary of some research being conducted by the University of Texas, Arlington (UTA) through funding by TxDOT. The research involves the lateral load testing of drilled shafts that are used for cable […]
ENR reports that a nuclear waste repository for spent nuclear fuel in Sweden could begin construction as early as 2016. The facility would consist of 50km of tunnels in granite bedrock up to 500-m deep. […]
Severe erosion was discovered on an October 2008 inspection of Allegheny River Lock and Dam No. 6 near Pittsburgh, PA, a US Army Corps of Engineers structure. In the Q1 2009 issue of PileDriver Magazine […]
A temporary micropile underpinning foundation system was used to support the abutments of the US 69 bridge over the Kansas River near Kansas City, KS while repairs to the abutment bearing devices were performed. This post is based on my notes from the presentation titled “Emergency Micropile Underpining of the U.S. 69 Truss – Kansas River Bridge” by Jim Brennan, Assistant [State?] Geotechnical Engineer with KDOT. It was the first presentation of the 34th Southwest Geotechnical Engineers Conference in Phoenix this week. Read on for more.
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