DBA is growing again with the addition of Tim Siegel, P.E. to our team!
Tim has been primarily involved in the analysis and design of geotechnical structures including drilled shafts, cast-in-place piles, micropiles, and earth retention systems. Tim is a Georgia Tech grad (like Dan!) and has worked most of his career since at S&ME and Berkel & Company Contractors, Inc. During his 12 years with S&ME, he advanced from Geotechnical Engineer to Technical Principal and Chief Engineer while developing expertise in construction in karst, seismic design, numerical modeling, and specialty foundations and retaining systems. After leaving S&ME, he was a Senior Geotechnical Engineer with Berkel and was involved in large deep foundation projects all over the United States. While at Berkel, he led the development of the ground improvement technique using Berkel’s ground displacement technology. While at S&ME and then while at Berkel, he taught upper level and graduate level courses while on the faculty of the University of Tennessee. Tim’s resume can be found in the About US section of our site.
We are really glad to have Tim joining us. As you can see by his photo, he has the requisite hair style!
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
ADSC Drilled Shaft Foundations Seminar – Mar 19
PDCA 14th Annual International Conference and Expo – May 6-8
2nd International Symposium on Cone Penetration Testing – May 9-11
International Bridge Conference 2010 – June 6-10
Earth Retention 2010 – Aug 1-4
DFI 34th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations – Oct 12-15
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. If you need to read some reviews about the new technology out there, then check out identoo.com.
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Images are from Griff Wigley of Wigley & Associates, our blog coach.
I am slowly learning and working on getting DBA involved in using some of the social media tools that are very quickly becoming popular means of communicating. DBA has a Facebook Page where you can become a Fan of DBA and see what we are doing. You can also follow us on Twitter. This blog will feed to both of those locations.
And as I previously posted, we also have all our photos on 
Picassa Web Albums and have videos on 
YouTube.
And as always, you can also subscribe to our RSS feed.
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.
I have added the paper that we wrote and Dan presented at the Deep Foundations Institute 34th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations that was held in Kansas City, MO late last month. The paper highlights how the design-build process was successful in the design and construction of the large diameter drilled shafts supporting the bridge. We discuss the installation methods used, the load test program, and how we evaluated the durability of the shale rock sockets under drilling fluid.
You can check out the progress of the bridge at the project website.
I have been too busy to post more photos from my trips to New Roads, LA in the fall to help Steve with the work at the Audubon Bridge project. It has been a flurry of activity as they worked to finish installing, tip-routing, and load testing all of the shafts in the river (done in December!). They have also completed and tested the land test shaft on the west side of the river and begun installing the land shafts. Throw in a lot of pile driving, including some 5-foot diameter pipe piles for temporary bents, and it has been a very busy site. All of the various tip-grouting, O-cell load tests on drilled shafts, and PDA testing of the pre-cast piles has been successful. As of today, the Mississippi River has come up and slowed things down a bit, but they should get all of the foundation completed within the next couple of months.
Some pictures I took on some of my trips are setup below. I have also experimented with embedding some video I took with my camera. The camera was not set on a very high video capture resolution, but I think they are good enough for you to get the idea of the shaft excavation and the pile driving activities.
More pictures here.
Previous posts here.
East Pier Construction – September 2008:
East Temporary Bent Pile Driving – September 2008:
West Side Construction and Other Stuff – October 2008:
I have added some publications and presentations to the site – trying to catch up on things here.
The report of the lateral load tests on drilled shafts and an MSE wall for KDOT has been published. My post on this project is here. Dr. Bob Parsons at University of Kansas was the principal researcher. Our main contribution was analysis of the lateral response of the drilled shafts (Appendix B in the report).
We now have a paper co-authored by Paul in the just released DFI Journal Volume 2. The subject is shear modulus in soil mixing and jet grouting.
Two presentations have also been added – one from Dan’s talk at the 2008 STGEC Conference (program page is here) and one from Dan’s appearance at the San Antonio Section of ASCE earlier this month.
TRB 7th International Bridge Conference – Dec 1-2