Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a great year in 2010!
Comments are welcome on which of the elves are Aaron, Paul, Robert, and Steve.
(Image form our Christmas Holiday card purchased from www.KerstenCards.com)
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Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a great year in 2010!
Comments are welcome on which of the elves are Aaron, Paul, Robert, and Steve. (Image form our Christmas Holiday card purchased from www.KerstenCards.com)
I have updated our calendar for 2010 to include many events in the geotechnical and foundation engineering world that may be of interest, plus known speaking/teaching appearances by Dan. I’ll put in a plug for the events calendars and listings for ADSC, DFI, Geo-Institute, and PDCA. I get most of my information from them.
Some, but not all events,(in addition to my previous post) are:
DFI Helical Foundations & Tiebacks Specialty Seminar – Feb 1
DFI and PDCA – A Joint Conference on Driven Pile – Mar 12
2nd International Symposium on Cone Penetration Testing – May 9-11
Some items of note from the geo-industry…. First, Tony Marinucci, P.E. joins the staff at ADSC. Here is the release from ADSC highlighting Tony’s career and his new position.
Second, the PDCA is soliciting nominees for the 2010 Project of the Year award. There are several categories based on project location and size. Projects must have been completed in 2009. Deadline for entries is February 26, 2010.
Third, registration is open for the Geo-Institute GeoFlorida 2010 conference in West Palm Beach, Florida. There will be short courses, a technical program, student competitions, exhibits, honoring our heroes, and all the usual events at the annual G-I meeting. Click on the logo to go to the conference website.
Lastly, abstracts are now being accepted for consideration of the 2011 Geo-Institute meeting Geo-Frontiers 2011 in Dallas, Texas. Abstracts are due March 8, 2010. Click the logo to get to the conference website for submission information. An article on the kcICON bridge project was published in the November 2009 issue of Roads and Bridges magazine. The article was written by Pat Cassity, P.E. of Parsons Transportation Group, Brian Kidwell, P.E. of MoDOT, and Pat Byrne, P.E. of Massman. The on-line version is here. I have also posted a PDF on the kcICON page our Consulting Projects page you can access by clicking the image below. One area of work we are frequently involved in is data analysis and evaluation of lateral load tests performed by the Statnamic testing device (learn more at the website of Applied Foundation Testing). The mathematics involved in the data reduction can be quite formidable as you interpret the dynamic load-response to an equivalent static load-response. Regardless of the math behind it, watching a test can be pretty cool. It is a whole lot of work for a brief moment of load, but in some situations it can be more economical than a traditional load test. The video below is from a test on 170-foot long, 32-inch outside diameter steel pipe pile with 0.75"-inch wall thickness. The pile was filled with concrete that included an instrumented rebar cage. Enjoy!
Steve just can’t get enough of the state of Louisiana. Now that the Audubon Bridge foundations are complete, he needed an excuse to get back and found himself in the Crescent City observing production shaft base grouting at the Huey P. Long Bridge project. Here area few more good construction photos to supplement my previous post. Here is an interesting story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune about the bridge project explaining how they are widening the bridge.
Dan, Paul and Erik were at the 34th Deep Foundations Institute Annual Conference in Kansas City last month. Dan was one of the keynote speakers where he presented our paper on the drilled shafts for the Missouri River Bridge on the kcICON project in Kansas City. Paul was also able to receive the Special Recognition Award (honorable mention) in the annual project awards for the pile foundations at the Biloxi Bay Bridge project. More photos from the conference are at this link.
Yes, you read that right – the last drilled shaft has been installed on the John James Audubon Bridge near New Road, Louisiana. The project has been quite an adventure for us, especially Steve. He spent the most time on the site during shaft excavation, tip grouting, load testing, and even pile driving. Robert got to spend a fair amount of time, too, over the last couple of years. Paul was even lucky enough to make a couple of trips. The shaft construction was concluded with one last O-cell test on Shaft 3W South. Dan was present for the last load test which went fabulously well. If you are going to the Geo-Institute congress GeoForida 2010 next February in West Palm Beach, you can hear Steve present the paper he and Dan wrote on the tip grouting and load test program. The bridge is still under construction, of course, and will be an awesome structure when completed. It was an exciting project for us to be a part of the team. We’ll have a project summary posted in the near future to highlight the details of the foundations. For now, you will have to be satisfied with the slideshows below (in reverse chronological order) from some of our visits this summer and fall. Load Test at Shaft 3W South – October 2009 Excavation of Shaft 3W South – September 2009 Shaft Grouting and other Construction – June 2009 Shaft Excavation, Pile Driving, and Cofferdams – May 2009 |
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DBA blog now optimized for mobile devices
As part of our ongoing attempts to try to get in front of the technology pack (or at least not fall behind!), We’ve installed a WordPress plugin called WPTouch that allows for much faster optimized viewing of the this DBA blog when using the iPhone, iPod touch, Android (Google), BlackBerry and other touch-screen mobile devices. The photos below are are of a G1. Your results will vary by model.
Comments are visible after clicking on any post and you can add a comment as well. The best way to keep track of comments, however, is to use an RSS reader app on your device and subscribe to our comments RSS feed. Then if you see a comment that you’d like to comment on, click the link to the comment. It will activate the mobile-optimized view of the web page and position you for typing in your comment.
Images are from Griff Wigley of Wigley & Associates, our blog coach.