ADSC Lawrenceville Test Site–Prediction Contest!

By Robert Thompson, on July 26th, 2011

Update (7/31/11) – Field Day set for Thursday, August 18th – More info here!

Back by popular demand, we will hold a prediction contest for the second test site in the ADSC drilled shaft research project for rock sockets in the Southeastern U.S. Contestants are encouraged to download the information linked below and then submit their predictions of unit side resistance and base resistance that will be measured by the O-cell tests. The winner will be announced at the field test and demonstration day on site, as well as published in this blog along with all submitted predictions.

Two test shafts will be installed July 26 – 29th at the yard of Foundation Technologies, Inc. One will include a rock socket to attempt to test side and base resistance in the rock socket. The other shaft will be drilled to “rock auger refusal” to attempt to test side resistance in the partially weathered rock (locally termed PWR) and base resistance at “rock auger refusal”. In the Piedmont area, the highly weathered upper rock zone is commonly called PWR. Another common usage is “rock auger refusal” to define where “hard rock” begins. It is thought that designers may be overly conservative with base resistance values at “rock auger refusal”. Hopefully this test will provide useful data in that regard.

Testing will occur during a field demonstration day in mid-August. We’ll post the date once it is finalized.

Information to include the test shaft configurations and exploratory boring data can be downloaded here.

The contest entry form along with instructions for submission can be downloaded here.

We will have Aaron on site to observe and take lots of pictures. We’ll post his photos of the excavations as soon as we can (check the project web page soon after August 1st) to assist in making predictions.

All predictions must be submitted by the close of business, August 12, 2011.

For more information, visit the test site page.

Previous posts.

Dr. John Turner, P.E. joins DBA!

By David Graham, on June 14th, 2011

We are pleased to announce that John P. Turner, Ph.D., P.E., has joined our firm as a Senior Principal. Turner is Professor Emeritus, University of Wyoming, where he spent the past 25 years teaching and conducting research in geotechnical engineering. He has undergraduate degrees in both Geology and Civil Engineering and earned his doctorate in Geotechnical Engineering from Cornell University. John will bring his considerable expertise in design and construction of deep foundations to our practice. He is a co-author of the 2010 FHWA manual “Drilled Shafts: Construction Procedures and LRFD Design Methods” and the author of NCHRP Synthesis 360, “Rock-Socketed Shafts for Highway Structure Foundations”, as well as over 100 technical publications on the topics of deep foundations, earth retention, and landslide stabilization. Early in his career John was an engineering geologist with Herbert and Associates and he maintained his involvement in consulting throughout his academic career. Recent projects include design of rock-socketed drilled shafts for bridges at Pitkins Curve in Big Sur and the Antlers Bridge on I-5 in northern California. John is a recipient of the President’s Award and the Distinguished Service Award from the ADSC: International Association of Foundation Drilling. He has maintained active membership in ASCE for over 30 years and is a past chairman of the Committee on Deep Foundations of the Geo-Institute of ASCE.

DBA has a logo!

By Robert Thompson, on March 17th, 2011

After 5 years, Dan Brown and Associates finally has a logo! We tried to keep it simple, yet still reflect what we do best – deep foundations. That means piles, micropiles, CFA piles, as well as drilled shafts! While not necessarily the most exciting thing an engineering firm can do, it is part of growing up as a company. Hopefully you will see it more often at conferences and in publications.

Technical Note on ACIP Pile Load Testing

By David Graham, on March 9th, 2011

A technical note by Tim that appeared in the December 2010 issue of the DFI Journal has been added to our publications page. Tim’s note examines some issues related to axial load testing of augered cast-in-place (ACIP) piles, also know as augercast piles or CFA piles, that are not covered in ASTM D 1143/D 1143M-07 Standard Test Methods for Deep Foundations Under Static Axial Compression. Specifically, load hold time, unload-reload cycles, and fluctuations in incremental load are discussed as they relate to load testing for determining axial capacity or axial load distribution of ACIP piles. Details of instrumented ACIP pile load testing are also covered.

Siegel, T.C. (2010). “Load Testing and Interpretation of Instrumented Augered Cast-in-Place Piles”, DFI Journal Volume 4, No. 2, December 2010, Deep Foundations Institute, pp69-71.

DFI requests that the following be included with all DFI papers we post:

“This paper was originally published in DFI’s bi-annual journal, Volume 4, No. 2 in December 2010. 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. ”

kcICON Project Opens Ahead of Schedule

By Robert Thompson, on January 3rd, 2011

The kcICON project in Kansas City has been completed six months ahead of schedule and within budget with all lanes and ramps being open on December 18th. Demolition has begun on the existing Paseo bridge. You can see some photos of the demolition (like the one in this post – thanks kcICON!) at their Facebook page. It was a great experience for us to have been a part of this project. If you want to see all of our previous posts on this, click here. Other points of interest are linked below.

The Kansas City District of MoDOT

New I-70 Bridge Featured in Foundation Drilling Magazine

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.

kcICON Bridge Nears Completion

By Robert Thompson, on November 2nd, 2010

Paul received a few photos of the kcICON bridge that are just too cool not to share. These were sent to him by Massman Construction. These were taken in September of this year. MoDOT’s Flicker album of the dedication ceremony is here. The new bridge was dedicated and partially opened to traffic (southbound) on September 27th. The northbound traffic was shifted to the new structure on October 22nd. All of the bridges and ramps for the project will be opened by the end of the year – 6 months ahead of schedule. Can’t wait to see it after the exisitng bridge is demoloshed, though it is a pretty cool image with the old and new bridges together. Updates for the project are on the project Facebook Page.

Click here for previous posts on kcICON.

DBA on team for New Hastings, MN Bridge

By Robert Thompson, on August 30th, 2010

The Lunda/Ames design-build joint venture (Lunda Construction Company of Black River Falls, Wisconsin and Ames Construction, Inc. of Burnsville, Minnesota) has been awarded a contract to build the new Highway 61 Hastings Bridge over the Mississippi River in Hastings, Minnesota. Parsons Transportation Group is the designer and DBA is performing geotechnical design of the bridge foundations and settlement mitigation as a sub-consultant to PTG.

Here is the existing bridge that is being replaced (viewing from upstream):

In addition to several relatively large approach spans, the new bridge will include a 545ft long free-standing arch main span with four lanes of traffic and a 12 foot wide common use pedestrian/bike path. The new bridge will allow additional parking and an artistic plaza area south of the river. An anti-icing system will be installed to help achieve the 100-year design life.

On the south side of the Mississippi River, the bridge foundations will consist of spread footings bearing on dolostone bedrock. The remaining bridge foundations will utilize 42in diameter pipe piles. Several Statnamic load tests, both axial and lateral, will be performed by our friends at AFT.

Settlement mitigation is required beneath the North Embankment due to several relatively thick and deep strata of compressible fine-grained soils. The embankment will also be heavily instrumented to evaluate performance of the embankment and mitigation technique.

Preliminary work including subsurface investigation has begun. The subsurface investigation is being performed by Braun Intertec under sub-contract to DBA. Test piles will be installed in early September, 2010 with subsequent load testing soon after.

The awarded design-build contract is for $120M. The estimated project completion date is May 13, 2013.

DBA Project Page here.

Mn/DOT Hastings Bridge Project Home Page

Here is a sampling of the local news on the project award:

Hastings Star-Gazette: Many articles, ongoing

9/22 Star Tribune: New Hastings Bridge is on the way

July 1 South Washington County Bulletin: Bridge design chosen: It will be the tied-arch

July 1 Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal: Lunda/Ames team wins $120M Hastings Bridge contract

Three Updates: World Record O-Cell Load Test in St. Louis, MO

By Robert Thompson, on August 18th, 2010

Check out the bottom of my post on June 30th World Record O-Cell Load Test for some updates and new links to recent news articles.

Pile Load Tests in New Orleans – Presentation

By Robert Thompson, on July 25th, 2010

Robert made a presentation at the recent Alabama Section ASCE 2010 Summer Meeting on our participation in some pile load tests on a couple of the storm protection projects in New Orleans (see previous post here). DBA worked for Kiewit Engineering Company (KECo) and the two joint ventures on the projects, providing geotechnical consulting. We are collaborating with KECo on a couple of papers (maybe more) that include the test data. This presentation covered the basics of the test pile programs, highlighted some of the results, discussed the measured setup values for the piles (driven in the soft Louisiana clays), and looked at some comparisons of the dynamic and static load test results to the pile resistance predictions made by DBA during the course of our work. Please note that the Corps of Engineers (and their consultants) were the design engineers. Our work was in support of the contractor joint ventures, especially evaluating pile drivability and installation issues.

Some of the photos included in the presentation were obtained from the public Flickr albums posted by Team New Orleans, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. There are a lot of good photos there of many of the ongoing projects around New Orleans, as well as an album of historical photos.

You can check out several webcams at the West Closure project here.

You can see Robert’s presentation here.

UPDATE (11/1/10): I have replaced this presentation with a similar one presented at the STGEC 2010 conference in October. The link now directs to the more recent presentation.