The giant straddle cranes that load and unload cargo from the container ships at the Port of Oakland apply a fairly concentrated load along their wheel path. Over time, the wheel path area has settled, […]
The American Society for Testing and Materials, or ASTM, No. 57 stone is often used as sub base fill material below road surfaces and buildings. It is a fragmented stone with angular edges and is regularly utilized as a drainage layer when used with geotextile fabric. Although the material is touted by many as "self-compacting," excess voids left from zero compactive effort in locations with little confinement may not eliminate the possibility of future settlement. What happens when the environment above the No. 57 stone causes it to settle?
[Editor] Read on for the answer to this interesting question in the case of settlement of a structure at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The contributed article by Katherine Witt describes how URETEK Mid-Atlantic used their high-density polyurethane resin to stabilize the No. 57 stone beneath a settled foundation as well as lift the surrounding slab back into place. [/Editor]
Rockscience has been busy soliciting feedback from their user base on news features for their settlement analysis software program, Settle3D. After receiving all of the feedback in the beta program, many of the user suggestions […]
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]
When your gypsum plant is capable of producing 900 million square feet of wall board every year, you can’t afford to see your process shut down by settlement or problems with groundwater infiltrating or soil […]
Dimitrios at Deep Excavation posted an article last month about a new settlement method for helical piles that he is developing with Michael Perlow. The method is already showing promising results according to the article. […]
Work has begun to construct temporary piers to support the I-43 Leo Frigo Bridge. Pier 22 of the bridge settled approximately 2.5 feet in late September/early October. The new piers are being constructed by Lunda […]
Pier 22 of the Leo Frigo Bridge settled 22 to 27 inches last week causing a 400 foot long segment of the bridge to sag dramatically, forcing the closure of the bridge. There were no […]
URETEK ICR was contacted regarding settlement in two identical 1.5 million bushel grain flat storage buildings. The overall structure dimensions were 600 ft. long by 135 ft. wide with a Quonset style roof . Below the floor of the storage buildings, a tunnel with conveyance system and a series of aeration tunnels were installed to facilitate moisture control and grain transport.
[Editor] Check out the rest of this contributed Article from Ty Taylor of URETEK ICR, a GeoPrac.net sponsor. Ty describes how the foundations were lifted and stabilized using the URETEK Method® [/Editor]
The Oregon DOT stopped work on a 10-mile stretch of Highway 20 back in 2010 after several landslides were discovered during construction. Four bridges that were constructed by Yaquina River Constructors, a subsidiary of Granite […]
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