Tag Archives: Wisconsin DOT

Bridge Foundations

Raising the Leo Frigo Bridge

Work to begin lifting the sagging portions of the Leo Frigo Memorial Bridge on I-43 in Green Bay, Wisconsin is scheduled to begin Tuesday.  According to the Green Bay Press Gazette,  Zenith Tech Inc. is working on the repairs.  It will be a BIG lift, indeed…..

Raising the troubled Leo Frigo Memorial Bridge back into place will be a task equivalent to hoisting an entire fleet of 747s into the air.

Experts have calculated that the sagging section of Green Bay’s distressed bridge weighs more than 3 million pounds, or about 1,600 tons.

……

Zenith Tech crews are expected to spend several days using hydraulic jacks to boost the Leo Frigo back into position — a process that will go slow, by design.

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Starting with the northbound lanes, Zenith Tech will insert 10 hydraulic jacks beneath the bridge deck and operate them all simultaneously to raise the platform. Each jack will be exerting enough pressure to support 183,000 pounds, although Dreher said their capacity is 50 percent greater than that — just in case it is needed.

Dreher said the jacks will be calibrated carefully to operate in perfect unison, so there is no risk of the bridge deck leaning one way or the other as it is elevated.

“You can’t just go in there and start jacking away,” he said. “It definitely takes some coordination and good communication.

A very challenging and interesting repair project.  Kudos to the Wisconsin DOT and all involved in getting the repairs done quickly.

See our previous posts here.

Bridge Foundations, Miscellaneous

Leo Frigo Memorial Bridge, Wisconsin–Foundation Failure???

Picture Source: nbcchicago.com

While several of the DBA staff were at the DFI 38th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations last week, we received texts and calls from colleagues wondering if we had been called about the apparent foundation failure at the Leo Frigo Memorial Bridge in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  As of now, DBA has not been asked to be involved with the evaluation.  The Wisconsin DOT is currently investigating.  Our friend, Randy Post over at Geoprac.net has a post on the event, including a CNN video report that also recounts some other more dramatic bridge failures that were NOT due to foundation failures.

This bridge was built in 1980 and the “failure” is limited to a single pier that has subsided or settled a couple of feet in a rather sudden manner.

The Green Bay Press Gazette has this article with some video.  There is also an article noting that a petroleum pipeline is near the subject pier.

Actual failures of a foundation are rare, so if this is such a case, this will make a very interesting case history once the cause is determined.  Stay tuned for more developments.