Sometimes You Need More Than An Aggregate Pier Can Give!

Aggregate Piers, Rigid Inclusions and Ductile Iron Piles Team Up to Solve Ground Improvement Challenges!

Adjacent building construction, tight differential and total settlement tolerances, large variations in bottom of footing elevations, shoring interference, adjacent footing stress issues, very deep compressible soils......what's an engineer to do!

Aggregate pier elements are great ground improvement solutions that can solve 80% of these problems economically......so how do you handle the other 20% and make them work together?

Here are some recent case studies on how Rammed Aggregate Pier® elements combined with rigid inclusions and specialty piles have provided a 100% solution!

Virginia Tech Brodie Hall, Blacksburg, VA

Project Challenges included:

Heavily loaded mat foundations next to smaller footings
Excess settlement potential from adjacent footing stresses
Deep weak soil profile
Variable depth to a competent soil/rock layer
Tight settlement tolerances < ¾ inch total

Solutions:

Geopier Rigid Inclusions - Cement Treated Aggregate (CTA) Geopier® elements installed to depths up to 55 ft, minimized footing settlement to < ¾ inch for footings loaded up to 3600 kips, and eliminated adjacent footing stresses by providing a low compression Geopier element that transferred stress to the weathered rock profile.

Geopier Rammed Aggregate Pier® elements - provided economical support and controlled settlement to < ¾ inch for the lightly loaded footings.

Ductile Iron Piles - Provided an economical solution for areas where pier depths were 55 to 75 ft deep, by transferring loads down to the weathered rock layer.

REI @ Pike and Rose, Rockville, MD

Project Challenges included:

Providing ground improvement to stabilize 3 to 14 ft of clayey fill soils
Eliminating the need for over-excavation and shoring
Matching settlement of the south wall of the store with the adjacent 19-story building on drilled shafts
Manage issues with closely-spaced footings at different bearing elevations

Solutions:

Geopier Rammed Aggregate Pier elements were placed through the clayey fill soils and provided 6000 psf bearing to support footings with column loads up to 350 kips for most of the structure.

Ductile Iron Piles (DIPs) were used to support footings on the column li ne adjacent to the 19-story building. Pile lengths varied from 27 to 58 ft and were driven to decomposed rock. This minimizes differential settlement of the two adjoining buildings only where required.

Bottom Line

One size or type of ground improvement or foundation system does not solve every project requirement

Combinations of ground improvement, rigid inclusions and specialty piles on a design-build basis can economically solve the technical challenges engineers face every day.

Do you have a challenging ground improvement or deep foundation project? Click here for a project assessment.

Geopier Quality Assurance & Quality Control Training

GeoStructures provides training on Geopier Quality Assurance & Quality Control to engineers and technicians. If your firm is interested in participating, a presentation will be held at your office (early morning or late afternoon) followed by jobsite training.

For more information visit our website.

Need a Project Assessment?

If you have a project that could benefit from the use of Geopier ground improvement visit our website to submit a Project Assessment OR CALL: 410-458-0289.

Past Newsletters

Fall 2015 - Optimizing Footing Designs Using Geopier® Ground Improvement

May/June 2015 - Use of Geopier Ground Improvement in Organic Soils

April 2015 - Importance of Having Actual Structural Loads

March 2015 - Use of Ground Improvement for Floor Slab and Mat Foundation Support

February 2015 - Using Rammed Aggregate Pier Elements to Replace Piles or Drilled Shafts

January 2015 - Using Ground Improvement for Uncontrolled and Contaminated Fill Sites

News & Events

Professional Development Day - April 28th!

Shana Carroll of GeoStructures will be speaking at A FREE full day seminar to be held at Dutchland, Inc in Gap, PA. The seminar will include keynote speakers from the water and wastewater industry. For more information visit: http://bit.ly/1M2VewI.

Geopier Conference Awards

GeoStructures and other Geopier licensees recently attended the annual Geopier conference to learn about innovations and lessons learned in ground improvement. Matt Thompson of GeoStructures received the Outstanding Engineer Award, and Mat Klucina of GeoStructures received the Outstanding Sales Award.

GeoStructures Workshops

Annual Contractor Conference

For more information visit: http://bit.ly/1SOa0qZ

11th Annual Technical Conference

For more information visit: http://bit.ly/25JGIAW

Would you like to get your children interested in the construction industry? Or do you have a concept that you would like to build on a miniature scale?

Mini Materials offers various building supplies to accurately turn your models into real life buildings!

For more information on Mini Materials visit: http://www.minimaterials.com

GeoStructures, Inc

413 Browning Court Purcellville, VA 20132

703.771.9844

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