Get the New FHWA Drilled Shaft Manual
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Dan’s Speaking Schedule May 15-16, 2013: DFI Superpile 2013 Conference, Minneapolis, Minnesota
June 19-21, 2013: NHI Drilled Shaft Course, New Hampshire Department of Transportation, Concord, New Hampshire
July 11-12, 2013: Drilled Shafts for Major Bridge Projects, DFI-ADSC Drilled Shaft Seminar: Support with Confidence, Columbus, Ohio Other DBA Team Speaking Appearances Tim Siegel (May 16, 2013): Consideration of Overburden Effect on the Axial Resistance of CFA Piles Subjected to Loading Tests - DFI SuperPile 2013 - Minneapolis, Minnesota
Robert Thompson (June 5-7, 2013): NHI Driven Pile Foundation Inspection Course - Alabama Department of Transportation - Montgomery, Alabama
Robert Thompson (June 10-12, 2013): NHI Driven Pile Foundation Inspection Course - Alabama Department of Transportation - Grove Hill, Alabama
John Turner (June 19-21, 2013): NHI Drilled Shaft Course - New Hampshire Department of Transportation - Concord, New Hampshire
Conferences, Meetings, Seminars, Workshops
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By Robert Thompson, on November 7th, 2012 
It may not have been intended as such, but we will “claim” this large rock core on the Mississippi River as a “geotechnical monument”. At the site of the new I-70 crossing over the Mississippi River in St. Louis, one of the 11-foot diameter limestone rock cores retrieved from one of the rock sockets drilled for the bridge foundations has been placed on the river bank along with a sign. Our own David Graham stopped by and had some pictures taken when on a personal trip their last year. So, the next time you are in St. Louis, look for the big hunk of rock on the west bank (St. Louis side) near the new bridge north of the Arch.
Check out our previous posts on this project here.
 
By Robert Thompson, on August 1st, 2012 
Photo Credit: Missouri Department of Transportation
I and my fellow bloggers here at DBA (David Graham and Aaron Hudson) try to keep up with the various projects under construction that we had a part of. Sometimes it is hard to do once we have left the site after foundations are complete. Modern information technology makes it much easier, especially since most large infrastructure projects have a significant public outreach effort, either by the project design/build team, or the owning agency.
One such project, the New Mississippi River Bridge (I-70 Bridge) in St. Louis, MO, is really coming along. If work didn’t get in the way, I could spend a lot of time just browsing project photo galleries, or looking through the project cams.
(Previous posts)
By Robert Thompson, on February 13th, 2012 
The new I-70 Mississippi River Bridge in St. Louis, Missouri is moving along and getting noticed in the news. Here are a couple of (somewhat) recent articles:
The Republic (Columbus, Indiana) (01/29/2012)
St. Louis Business Journal (01/10/2012)
KMOX CBS (12/28/2011)
The New Mississippi River Bridge Project page maintained by MoDOT has links to all that is happening on the project.
You can get real-time updates of the construction from three web-cams at this link. As I type today, the site is covered in snow. Very beautiful, unless you are trying to build a bridge on time!
The project page also has photo galleries and other neat stuff.
stltoday.com has some albums with good photos, including this one.
Previous posts on this bridge project are here, including the world record O-Cell test!
Photo Credit: MoDOT (http://www.newriverbridge.org/img/galleries/year2012/010612/2012-01-05mrbtowers-jan12-10.JPG)
By Robert Thompson, on January 24th, 2012 The drilled shaft foundations for the new I-70 Mississippi River Bridge in St. Louis, MO are the subject of two recent papers written by Paul and Dan and published by DFI. Dan presented the paper focusing on the Alternate Technical Concept (ATC) process at the DFI 36th Annual Conference in October. (previous post here). A case history paper by Paul and Dan was published last month in Volume 5, Number 2 of the DFI Journal. Links to the papers are below, as well as on our Publications page. Other posts on this bridge are here.
Brown, D.A., Axtell, P.J., and Kelley, J. (2011). “The Alternate Technical Concept Process for the Foundations at the New Mississippi River Bridge, St. Louis”, Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations, 2011, Boston, MA, USA, pp171-177.
This paper was originally published in the Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations, the 2011 annual meeting of DFI. Go to www.dfi.org to purchase the procedings or for further information.
Axtell, P.J. and Brown, D.A. (2011). “Case History – Foundations for the New Mississippi River Bridge – St.Louis”, DFI Journal Volume 5, Number 2, December 2011, Deep Foundations Institute, pp3-15.
This paper was originally published in DFI’s bi-annual journal, Volume 5, No. 2 in December 2011. DFI is an international technical association of firms and individuals involved in the deep foundations and related industry. The DFI Journal is a member publication. To join DFI and receive the journal, go to www.dfi.org for further information.
By Robert Thompson, on November 17th, 2011 DFI held its 36th Annual Meeting October 18-21 in Boston, including the annual awards banquet. Dan was honored with the 2011 Distinguished Service Award at the banquet. The Christopher S. Bond Bridge in Kansas City, MO was honored with a Special Recognition award (one of 5 runners-up for the Outstanding Project Award). Photos of DBA folks at the event are posted below. All of the photos from the meeting can be found at this link.
Dan gave a presentation on the Alternate Technical Concept (ATC) that DBA supported for the I-70 Bridge over the Mississippi River in St. Louis, MO. The link to the presentation is below. (Some previous posts here and here and here; posts with links to other presentations here).
PowerPoint Presentation – Alternate Technical Concept: Foundations for the New Mississippi River Bridge, St. Louis – Dan Brown, Ph.D., P.E – DFI 36th Annual Conference, Boston, MA, October 20, 2011.
Dan receiving the 2011 DFI Distinguished Service Award
Robert receiving the Special Recognition Award for the Christopher S. Bond Bridge Project
Paul and Erik at the reception before the awards banquet
By Robert Thompson, on March 24th, 2011 Paul gave a presentation recently at the Iowa ASCE Geotechnical Conference where he discussed two project case histories for LRFD design of bridge foundations. The meeting was held March 3, 2011 in Ames, Iowa. In his presentation, Paul gave an overview of the LRFD design procedure as it applies to foundations, reminding them that LRFD is not difficult and that it provides a logical framework for incorporating reliability into foundation design. Paul talked about our experiences using LRFD for foundation design for two bridges over the Mississippi River: the Hastings Bridge in Hasting Minnesota and the new I-70 bridge in St. Louis, Missouri. Both bridges are currently under construction.
A PDF of his presentation can be found at the link through the image below, or on our Presentations page.
Previous Hastings posts
Previous I-70 posts
By David Graham, on December 10th, 2010 
The new I-70 bridge over the Mississippi River near St. Louis, Missouri is quite the project. When completed, it will be the third longest cable-stayed bridge in the United States, with a 1,500-ft main span. Most significantly for the geotechnical community, the bridge made history when one of its 11-ft diameter drilled shafts resisted a world record breaking 36,000 tons (bi-directional) during an O-cell load test. The bridge has already seen press in Civil Engineering Magazine (July 2010, page 30-32), at ENR.com, and in a post by Robert on this blog. Now, an article by DBA’s Paul Axtell is featured in the September/October issue of Foundation Drilling Magazine. The editor summarized the article saying:
The information in the following article is a composite of material that came to Foundation Drilling Magazine from three separate sources. Part I is based on information gleaned from an article that was published on the Associated Press news wire. Part II is excerpted from ENR’s August 18th, E-Newsletter. Part III was provided by Paul Axtell and Dan Brown of ADSC Technical Affiliate company, Dan Brown and Associates. The bridge project is of interest in general. The Osterberg Load Cell test will be of particular interest to professionals in the deep foundation industry, and specifically for those who work in the drilled shaft segment.
Axtell, P.J. (2010). “Mississippi River Bridge Project Includes Record Load Test: A Three Part Story”, Foundation Drilling, Vol. 31, No. 7 September/October 2010.
By Robert Thompson, on November 1st, 2010  Dan recently played the part of storyteller at the Southeastern Transportation Geotechnical Engineering Conference (STGEC) 2010 conference in Charleston, West Virginia when he gave the lunch presentation on the conference’s first day. He took the audience on a trip down the Mississippi River from a foundation engineer’s perspective, talking about several bridges that DBA has had the pleasure to work on, or is still working on, along the river the last few years. Dan began with the I-35W Bridge replacement in Minneapolis, Minnesota and ended at the Huey P. Long Bridge in New Orleans, Louisiana. Stops along the way included the Hastings Bridge (Hastings Minnesota), the new I-70 Bridge (St. Louis, Missouri), and the Audubon Bridge (New Roads/St. Francisville, Louisiana). Dan covered some of the technical issues/problems associated with each project and the solutions applied to complete the foundations (or complete the design). It was a very informative talk presented in a unique way that everyone at the luncheon seemed to enjoy. Dan’s presentation is now available on our Presentations Page.
Posts on Hastings Bridge here.
Posts on I-70 Bridge here.
Posts on Audubon Bridge here.
Posts on the Huey P. Long Bridge here.
 Immediately after lunch, Robert made a presentation that described some of the pile load tests performed on two of the storm protection projects in New Orleans that DBA was privileged to be involved with through Kiewit. By following Dan, it provided a little continuity to the story as Robert took the group below the Huey P. Long Bridge to the levees and canals downstream of New Orleans. Robert’s presentation can also be found on our Presentations Page.
Post on the pile load tests here.
By Robert Thompson, on June 30th, 2010 
DBA was part of foundation engineering and construction history while participating in a drilled shaft load test for the New I-70 Mississippi River Bridge in St. Louis, Missouri. A new O-cell world record of 36,000 tons (bi-directional) was achieved on the test, besting the former record of just under 32,000 tons set in 2005 in Korea (see here).
The test shaft was built by MTA (a joint venture of Massman/Traylor Brothers/Alberici Constructors) as part of an Alternative Technical Concept (ATC) that MTA submitted in their winning bid. During the bid phase, the owner allowed ATC’s to be submitted by pre-qualified teams. These ATC’s were unique to the team that submitted them (e.g., each team was allowed to submit their own ATC’s if they desired, but the ATC’s were not shared amongst all the teams). DBA worked with MTA to develop an ATC that optimized the drilled shaft foundations shown in the “baseline” drawings provided by the owner. That ATC provided a more economical foundation solution that was accepted, bid, and awarded (note MTA also had the option of bidding the “baseline” drawings as-is). A full-scale load test on a dedicated test shaft using the Osterberg Cell (O-cell) test method was included in the ATC to: 1) prove the design values used for the resistance in the rock socket; and (2) take advantage of higher resistance factors for using a load tests as opposed to only calculations. The baseline drawings did not include a load test.
Loadtest, Inc. performed the load test. The bottom-up static load test applied slightly greater than 36,000 tons (bi-directional) to the shaft resulting in about 1/8in of upward movement of the shaft and about the same magnitude of downward displacement at the base. The rock socket was about 23ft deep and 11ft in diameter in very hard limestone. Four 34in O-cells placed at the base of the shaft were loaded to 150% of their rated capacity to achieve the record load.
UPDATE (8/4/10): The bridge was featured in the July 2010 issue of Civil Engineering magazine from ASCE in the “News” section. Follow the link below and then go to Page 30.
Civil Engineering July 2010
UPDATE (8/17/10): Press Release from MTA (contractor joint venture).
UPDATE (8/18/10): ENR.com Article
 
By Robert Thompson, on May 28th, 2010
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