photo by Jim Adams of the Minneapolis Star Tribune

Massive prestressed concrete girders, some of them setting a record for the longest concrete girders used on a Minnesota bridge, have been set at the New Hastings Bridge, currently under construction in Hastings, Minnesota.  The largest girders are 174 feet long, 8 feet tall, . . . → Read More: Girders go in at Hastings]]>

photo by Jim Adams of the Minneapolis Star Tribune

Massive prestressed concrete girders, some of them setting a record for the longest concrete girders used on a Minnesota bridge, have been set at the New Hastings Bridge, currently under construction in Hastings, Minnesota.  The largest girders are 174 feet long, 8 feet tall, and weigh 108 tons!  There is a video of one of these huge beams being delivered on a 16 axle truck, below.  An article from the December 2011 issue of Concrete Products magazine about the girders can be found here.  To date, all of the girders between the north abutment and main span have been placed.  Crews are preparing piers 5 and 6 for the main span steel arches, which are scheduled to be floated in by barge and lifted into place late this year.  MnDOT has two web cams where  the bridge construction and the arch construction can be viewed. The Minneapolis Star Tribune has also been following the construction.  Their latest article, which hails the bridge as “a monumental marvel,” can be found here.

Click here for more information on our website about the New Hastings Bridge

Click here for MnDOT’s project page

In addition to the ADSC EXPO 2012 earlier in March (see post here), the annual Geo-Institute meeting for 2012, GeoCongress 2012 , was held later in the month in Oakland, California.  The conference featured a very large technical program with a variety of tracks covering geotechnical engineering . . . → Read More: GeoCongress 2012–Dan Gives A SOP Lecture; John Turner paper published]]> GeoCongress 2012, Oakland, California

In addition to the ADSC EXPO 2012 earlier in March (see post here), the annual Geo-Institute meeting for 2012, GeoCongress 2012 , was held later in the month in Oakland, California.  The conference featured a very large technical program with a variety of tracks covering geotechnical engineering topics.  There were also the annual named lectures (Terzaghi, Peck, etc.) and other special events. Randy Post wrote about his time at the GeoCongress at his blog, GeoPrac.net.  Check out all of his posts on the conference, including photos and video.

A key feature of this congress was the State of the Art (SOA) and State of the Practice (SOP) Lectures given throughout the four days.  Thirty prominent engineers were invited to give the SOA/SOP lectures.  Dan gave one of the SOP lectures with his highlighting advances in drilled foundation use and selection. His paper, along with all of the other SOA/SOP lectures, is included in GSP No. 226, Geotechnical Engineering State of the Art and Practice, Keynote Lectures from GeoCongress 2012.  His presentation is linked on the image below.

During the regular technical sessions, John Turner presented a paper on a recent project case history on rock-socketed drilled shaft foundations used for a bridge . His paper is in the conference proceedings volume (GSP No. 225):

Turner, J.P., Duffy, J.D., Buell, R. and Zheng, X (2012). “Foundations for the Bridge at Pitkins Curve”, GeoCongress 2012 State of the Art and Practice in Geotechnical Engineering, Geotechnical Special Publication No. 225, ASCE, pp414-423.

There were several of us presenting at the ADSC EXPO 2012 in mid-March: Dan, Erik, Robert and Tim. The EXPO is always a great event (occurs every 3 years) where equipment manufacturers and dealers bring out all of the big equipment (as Dr. Dave Elton at . . . → Read More: Papers from ADSC EXPO 2012–Drilled Shafts and Other Drilled Foundations]]> ADSC EXPO 2012, San Antonio, Texas

There were several of us presenting at the ADSC EXPO 2012 in mid-March: Dan, Erik, Robert and Tim. The EXPO is always a great event (occurs every 3 years) where equipment manufacturers and dealers bring out all of the big equipment (as Dr. Dave Elton at Auburn has been known to say: “It’s a classic case of big boys and big toys!”).  It is a lot of fun to be able to walk through a large show of equipment and tooling that is all clean and painted – you can see what it is all supposed to look like!  As an engineer, you can learn a lot about the latest tools, equipment capabilities, and the like from the sales and manufacturing reps.  The ADSC always does a great job putting this event on, and this year’s venue a the J.W. Marriott Hill Country Resort outside San Antonio was fantastic.

Dan and Robert both had papers included in the proceedings. Links to the papers are below.  Erik and Tim had presentations along with those that Dan and Robert gave on their papers.  Links to the presentations are on our Presentations page.

Brown, D.A. (2012). "Factors Affecting the Selection and Use of Drilled Shafts for Transportation Infrastructure Projects", ADSC EXPO 2012 Geo-Construction Conference Proceedings, March 14-17, 2012, San Antonio, TX, pp25-35.

Thompson, W.R. (2012). "ADSC Research Project Update: Rock Sockets in the Southeastern U.S", ADSC EXPO 2012 Geo-Construction Conference Proceedings, March 14-17, 2012, San Antonio, TX, pp103-117.

Photo Credit: enr.construction.com

The John James Audubon Bridge between New Roads and St. Francisville, Louisiana was officially completed February 27, 2012.  The bridge was opened to traffic in May of last year, but was declared officially completed last month.  This bridge has a special spot in the heart of DBA as it was . . . → Read More: Audubon Bridge Officially Complete!]]>

Photo Credit: enr.construction.com

The John James Audubon Bridge between New Roads and St. Francisville, Louisiana was officially completed February 27, 2012.  The bridge was opened to traffic in May of last year, but was declared officially completed last month.  This bridge has a special spot in the heart of DBA as it was one of the early large bridges we worked on as a company.  Steve and Dan poured their energy and expertise into the project starting in spring of 2006, all the way to completion of the last foundations in 2010.  Steve spent a good part of his life on site during foundation construction.  I spent a fair amount of time there myself helping Steve cover things now and then, including observing the soil borings for the main tower piers during the design. 

The JJA (as we like to call it) was the subject of one of my early posts when we started this blog in early 2006.  You can scroll through the many posts made during our work on the project here, starting with the soil boring program.

From the press release posted on the TIMED Audubon Bridge site:

Construction on the John James Audubon Bridge has officially come to a close. The new Mississippi River crossing is the longest cable-stayed bridge in the Western Hemisphere, with a 1,583’ main span. Located in south-central Louisiana, the Audubon Bridge connects West Feliciana Parish with Pointe Coupee Parish and is the only bridge between Baton Rouge and Natchez, Mississippi. Construction on the $409 million project began in 2006 and continued when the bridge was opened in May 2011 due to high water levels closing the St. Francisville Ferry sooner than expected.

"Although the Audubon Bridge has been open to traffic for nine months, it’s with a great sense of accomplishment that we are announcing the end of construction on this beautiful structure," said Department of Transportation and Development Secretary Sherri H. LeBas, P.E. "The completion of this bridge opens economic development in south-central Louisiana and will be a source of regional, statewide, and national pride."

Dan ran across this blog entry from Angelle Bergeron, a freelance writer in New Orleans writing as the New Orleans correspondent for Engineering News-Record.  Check it out.

Personally, I look forward to making a trip through the area and getting to cross this beautiful structure.  Hats off to Audubon Bridge Constructors, a joint venture of Flatiron Construction, Granite Construction and Parsons Transportation Group, for a job well done!

Dapp, S.D., Brown, D.A., and Parsons, R.L. (2011). “Hyperbolic P-Y Model for Static and Cyclic Lateral Loading Derived from Full-Scale Lateral Load Tesing in Cemented . . . → Read More: Hyperbolic P-Y Model from Lateral Load Tests in Loess Soils]]> Another paper featured in the December 2011 issue of the DFI Journal was authored by Steve and Dan, along with Dr. Bob Parsons at the University of Kansas. 

Dapp, S.D., Brown, D.A., and Parsons, R.L. (2011). “Hyperbolic P-Y Model for Static and Cyclic Lateral Loading Derived from Full-Scale Lateral Load Tesing in Cemented Loess Soils”, DFI Journal Volume 5, Number 2, December 2011, Deep Foundations Institute, pp35-43.

The paper describes a program of lateral load tests on six drilled shafts installed in a loess deposit at a site in Wyandotte County, Kansas.  The lateral load test data, along with site characterization data that included CPT data, were used to develop a hyperbolic model to generate p-y curves for use in lateral load analyses in cemented soils.  The model should be applicable to many “c-phi” soils (soils with both a cohesion intercept and a friction angle, such as cemented soils).  Degradation of the static soil model to account for cyclic loading effects is included in the new model.

This paper was originally published in the DFI Journal, Vol. 5 No. 2, December 2011, the bi-annual Journal of the Deep Foundations Institute.  DFI is an international technical association of firms and individuals involved in the deep foundations and related industry. The DFI Journal is provided to DFI members at no cost electronically or can be purchased in print at www.dfi.org.

This paper is one of several papers and articles published form a series of research projects by KU and the Kansas DOT.  Some of the previous work can be found at these links:

Characterization of Loess for Deep Foundations (1/26/10)

Pierson, M., Parsons, R.L., Han, J., Brown, D.A. and Thompson, W.R. (2008). "Capacity of Laterally Loaded Shafts Constructed Behind the Face of a Mechanically Stabilized Earth Block Wall", Report for the Kansas Department of Transportation

Lateral load tests of drilled shafts behind an MSE wall – research with KDOT and KU (12/6/07)

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 . . . → Read More: I-70 Mississippi River Bridge–News and Webcams!]]>

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)

This is the second report from their research project on rock-socketed drilled shafts in the Southeast U.S.  This report is from the Lawrenceville, Georgia test site where shafts constructed in metamorphic rock of the Piedmont geologic . . . → Read More: ADSC SE Chapter Lawrenceville Test Site Report Published]]> The report for the ADSC Southeast Chapter Lawrenceville, Georgia Test Site is complete and published (link below).

This is the second report from their research project on rock-socketed drilled shafts in the Southeast U.S.  This report is from the Lawrenceville, Georgia test site where shafts constructed in metamorphic rock of the Piedmont geologic province were load tested using the O-Cell load test device.  The report link is below.  Additional information about the test site can be found at the Lawrenceville Site Page.

The first site of this project was in Nashville, Tennessee where shafts constructed in limestone were tested.  Information on the Nashville Site and the test reports can be found at the Nashville Site Page.

Both reports will be the feature of a paper and presentation by Robert at the 2012 ADSC Expo, March 13-17, in San Antonio, TX. More information about the Expo can be found here.

Thompson, W.R., Brown, D.A., and Hudson, A.B. (2012). “Load Testing of Drilled Shaft Foundations in Piedmont Rock, Lawrenceville, GA, Report for ADSC Southeast Chapter, January, 2012.