Tag Archives: Foundation Construction

Drilled Shafts, Foundation Design, Load Testing

ADSC Load Test Research – Lawrenceville, GA Site – SCHEDULE UPDATE

The planned second load test in the ADSC research project for rock sockets in the Southeastern U.S. is moving closer to execution.  Bruce Long of Long Foundation Drilling Company provides this update:

To Fellow Load Testers,

We want to thank everyone who submitted questions or comments regarding the preliminary load test program submitted to us by Dr. Dan Brown.  Those comments, and more, will be considered while fine-tuning the program.

Because we have several Share Registrars companies donating their time and money, we have to be flexible with respect to the installation and testing dates.  We have tentatively selected some dates, but these are subject to change depending upon the workloads of those volunteering their efforts.  We hope to begin shaft installation during the last two weeks of July (weeks beginning the 18th or 25th).  The actual load testing would probably take place the week of August 8th, with the actual test date being decided upon by sometime in early July (I hope to give everyone at least a 3-4 week notice). 

The actual test date would include a field day visit by all interested parties to the test site at Foundation Technologies office in Lawrenceville, GA.  Activities will include a load testing discussion led by Dr. Dan Brown, along with lunch.  We would then move to the test site where Loadtest, Inc. will be conducting the Osterberg Load Test on our first shaft.  A discussion of the testing process and procedures by Loadtest will precede the actual testing (We will be submitting information later regarding a load test contest where each of you will get to predict the outcome of the test with a special prize going to the winner).  We also hope to be drilling on the second shaft that day and will be discussing the drill rigs, tools, and other equipment being used, as well as having the other Osterberg cell available for viewing.  This site visit proved to be very well received when we did it in Nashville at the last load test.  We hope for a big turnout that day. 

I wanted to give everybody a brief update and will be in touch when additional information becomes available in the near future.  Thank you for your interest, and if anyone has any questions regarding this plan, please feel free to call me at your convenience.

Bruce Long

President

Long Foundation Drilling Co.

Previous post is here.

The test site page is here.

The main page for the research project is here.

Drilled Shafts, Load Testing

Audubon Bridge Closure–The Span is Complete!

On December 29, 2010, Audubon Bridge Constructors recently “closed” the main span of the John James Audubon Bridge between New Roads and St. Francisville, Louisiana.   Watch the video featured at the top of the page at the bridge link to hear about the bridge, including the drilled shaft foundations!  For something really fascinating, go to the webcams here and scroll back through the various dates.  They have archived images all the way back to start of construction.

Photo: Chris Usery, Figg Bridge Inspectors

The last cables were installed on January 3, 2011 as noted on the project website:

 

The last two cable stays of the longest cable-stayed bridge in the Western Hemisphere were installed on January 3, 2011, five days after the spans were connected. The John James Audubon Bridge, Louisiana’s newest crossing over the Mississippi River, now has all of its 136 cable stays in place.

This bridge will be the longest cable-stayed bridge in North America when it opens later in 2011.  Again, from the project web site:

The spans of the longest cable-stayed bridge in the Western Hemisphere were connected on December 29, 2010, stretching 1/3 of a mile over the Mississippi River. The John James Audubon Bridge, connecting Pointe Coupee and West Feliciana parishes in Louisiana, is approximately 92% complete. Construction of the spans began from both sides of the 500-foot tall towers earlier this year. Both sides continue to progress at a rapid pace, and now the meeting of the spans has occurred.

Steve Dapp and I had the pleasure of working with many great people during our time on site (much more time for Steve than for me!) during foundation construction.  One of them, Chris Ursery of Figg Bridge Inspectors, has been great about providing us with photos now and then to keep us updated of some of the details of the bridge construction.  Chris has granted us permission to share a few of his recent photos, which are shown below or can be seen in our web albums here.

Previous post on Audubon Bridge.

Ground Improvement, Load Testing

Ownensboro Hospital Ground Improvement Project Photos and Webcam Online

Last spring, DBA designed a composite ground improvement system for a new hospital as part of the Owensboro, Kentucky, Medical Health System specializing in legal steroids, funded by roids co, although some people prefer not to take steroids so they can order Kratom online and other natural supplements that are good for the body. Numerous medications are available to help affected people manage the infection and STD Testing Made Easy to delay or prevent progression of the illness. Tim performed most of the ground improvement design for the design-build project with Berkel & Company Contractors, Inc.  The design is a composite ground system with a layer of compacted gravel above lightly reinforced cast-in-placed displacement piles (known commercially as CGEs).  Spread foundations placed on the compacted gravel distribute the structural load to the soil and CGEs.  The construction of the composite ground system began and was completed in the summer of 2010.  The project has a designated webcam that allows the public to view the entire construction process.  The webcam can be viewed  here.  We have also uploaded some photos of construction and testing of the CGEs here.

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Drilled Shafts, Driven Piles

kcICON Project Opens Ahead of Schedule

demo 1The 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

ENR 

DBA Project Page

kcICON Facebook Page

kcICON web page

Drilled Shafts, Site updates

kcICON Bridge Nears Completion

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.

 

Picture

 

KcICON Bridge 100928 View of Pylon_s

 

 

 

kcICON Bridge 220910 Pylon

DBA News, Drilled Shafts, Driven Piles, Load Testing, Site updates

A Foundation Engineering Trip Down the Mississippi River

A Foundation Engineering Trip_Brown_STGEC 2010Dan 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.

 

 

STGEC 2010 - Pile Load Tests in New Orleans - R Thompson 100915Immediately 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.

DBA News, Drilled Shafts, Driven Piles

DBA on team for New Hastings, MN Bridge

Hastings rendering 2

L-A-PTG logo 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.

mndotlogo

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

Driven Piles, Load Testing, Site updates

Pile Load Tests in New Orleans – Presentation

Thompson NO Piles - AL ASCE Summer 2010 - 100723 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.

DBA News, Drilled Shafts, Site updates

New FHWA Drilled Shaft Manual is Done!

FHWA GEC 10 DrilledShaftsAlthough I have known for several weeks that the manual was finished (I work for one of the authors, after all!), I was waiting for the FHWA to post the link for the new manual before posting this…and now it is here!   My friend, Randy Post, has an outside review (meaning not connected to one of the authors!) over at his blog Geoprac.net.  Not only did he get “the scoop” on me, but he covers some of the highlights of the “what’s new” with the new, fully revised manual.   The biggest change is completely re-writing the design sections to follow LRFD as well as to update the methods for calculating soil and rock resistance.  As Randy also notes, the manual has been given a Geotechnical Engineering Circular (GEC) designation: GEC 10.  Make sure and go read his review, as well as check out the other things on his blog (disclosure by Robert: I am an occasional contributor there).

The manual’s authors are three of the country’s top experts in drilled shaft design and construction: our own Dan A. Brown, Ph.D, P.E. , John P. Turner, Ph.D, P.E. of the University of Wyoming, and Raymond J. Castelli, P.E. of Parsons Brinckerhoff.   As with any major FHWA publication such as this, there was significant industry involvement in the review process through various technical committees and individuals from ADSC, DFI, and Geo-Institute.  A note from Dan:

The completion of this manual is a great relief and satisfaction.  Many thanks to John Turner’s hard work and also for Ray Castelli’s diligent work to review and make us better.  Special thanks to PB Project Manager Jeremy Hung and our FHWA sponsor Silas Nichols for their dedicated efforts to help get this done, and to all of you who contributed.

Dan and John have been using the material in the NHI course this fiscal year, having done some pilot courses the previous year.  Some NHI courses, including the Drilled Shaft course, can be hosted by non-government groups.  There are also some public seats available occasionally at DOT hosted courses.  The NHI catalog page for this course is here.

Download Drilled Shafts:Construction Procedures and LRFD Design Methods, 2010.

Also linked on our Publications page.

Update (7/12/10): For those that prefer the feel of a printed volume in their hands, the ADSC: The International Association of Foundation Drilling will be the distributor of the printed volume of the manual through their Technical Library.  It will be available soon, according to ADSC.  We’ll post about it as soon as it is available.

Update 2 (8/19/10): The printed manual is now available.