Transportation - A.H. Beck Foundation Co., Inc.
This Railroad Bridge was completed in the countryside of Southwest Vermont over a pristine brook in Sunderland. The Owner was the Vermont Agency of Transportation; the General Contractor was S&R Corporation out of Lowell, Massachusetts. This work involved installing only four shafts to a 65-foot bridge, with depths ranging from 60 to 70 feet, but its construction posed some unique challenges. The location of each of the four shafts was directly on either side of an active railway. Additionally, there was a public road right adjacent to the Railway. Careful planning and staging of equipment and materials was necessary to prevent impact traffic on the railroad or roadway.
The purpose of this project was to construct new paving and a series of bridge structures to straighten the “S” curve on IH59 through Laurel, MS. There were 166 drilled shafts, ranging in diameter from 36” to 72” and depths from 50’ to 93’, which included 5 Osterberg cell test shafts. A. H. Beck used temporary casings and permanent casings and the slurry displaced method to complete this project in 8 months. A lightweight hydraulic drill unit fabricated by A. H. Beck was used. It runs off the hydraulic motors of a 140 ton new generation crawler crane, which provides reaches previously only achieved by cranes with 200 ton capacities or greater.
A.H. Beck was contracted to complete the installation of the drilled shaft load test program for the new Ship Channel Bridge located in Harris County, Texas. The data obtained during the load test program was used to optimize the design of the new bridge structures and to develop an independent drilled shaft installation specification to be utilized for production installations. The load test program consisted of the installation of two instrumented shafts, measuring 96 inches in diameter and 225 feet in length (one near the north side pylon and one near the south side pylon) and one shaft measuring 48 inches in diameter and 120 feet in length along the north approach.
Texas State Highway 99 extending over the Brazos River has experienced severe erosion on its north bank since record flooding during the summer of 2016. There were concerns that if the bank erosion continued, it could not only cause instability of the bridge but could also affect the levee system behind the bridge, which protects a large population of residences. To detour the bank erosion, a drilled shaft tangent pile wall protection system was designed utilizing shafts measuring 66 inches in diameter and 120 feet deep. The design also included seal shafts measuring 24 inches in diameter to be installed in between the tangent piles.
A. H. Beck installed 60,000+ cubic yards of drilled shaft concrete in shafts from 18” to 144“ in diameter for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit CMG3 Light Rail Extension project. The tight right-of-way and restricted working areas required single column/single shaft foundation design for much of the elevated project bridges. Live adjacent railroad lines ran the length of the project right-of-way, which presented challenges in placing large volumes of drilled shaft concrete in an uninterrupted fashion.
The 2.25-mile long US 181 bridge spanning the Corpus Christi ship channel, originally opened in 1959, is being replaced due to the need for a higher-capacity roadway, and to reduce the navigational restrictions for ships traveling under the existing bridge. The four-lane bridge is being replaced with twin parallel cable stay bridges containing a 1,655-foot main span over the channel. The two main pylons feature 538-foot towers supported by 21 shafts measuring 10 feet in diameter, drilled to a depth of 230 feet. Due to the high-water table and soft alluvial soils found at the site, the shafts are being constructed with a short permanent casing in the top 50 feet and bentonite slurry below the casing. A total volume of 300,000 gallons of bentonite slurry is needed to excavate one shaft of this diameter and depth.
The Interstate 10/US 59 interchange near downtown Houston is touted as one of the busiest highway intersections in the state. Widening US 59 at this intersection was no easy task for TxDOT — due to the cities’ growth surrounding the interchange. The design called for large diameter deep foundations (to support single columns) in very tight locations. A. H. Beck was the successful bidder due to their experience and highly productive equipment for installing large diameter shafts with the high water table and soft coastal soils found at the site.
Overall, the foundation consists of 108 shafts measuring 48 inches along with 68 shafts measuring 60 inches. Plan depths vary from 90 feet to 117 feet. The shafts were constructed with polymer slurry due to the soft clays and silts. A. H. Beck successfully completed two Osterberg Load Tests, which allowed NCDOT to shorten some of the plan lengths while affording a considerable cost savings to the Owner.
This was a multi-phased project to allow this heavily traveled roadway to continue in service throughout the reconstruction. A. H. Beck utilized a combination of hydraulic and friction cranes with capacities ranging from 20 tons to 140 tons. Drill rigs included crane attachments, European style IMT rigs, and track mounted rigs manufactured by A. H. Beck. Temporary casing was installed and extracted with a vibratory hammer in the top portion of the slurry displaced shafts which were exposed to install the precast retaining wall panels.
This challenging project required large diameter drilled shafts to be installed at all four corners of the very busy intersection at NW25th St and SR-826 in Miami, FL. The foundations support a fly-over to span SR-826. At each corner, a 96” Drilled Shaft was installed on the ramps to the overhead highway, working around the clock through the weekends. The total project had 5 production drilled shafts – four 96” in diameter with depths from 75 feet to 85 feet, and one 96” x 116 foot test shaft. Each shaft has permanent steel surface casing, and was installed using mineral slurry due to the highly variable sands and limestone elevations. Each shaft was inspected using the Mini-SID (Shaft Inspection Device) and CSL tests to verify shaft integrity. A.H. Beck Foundation drilled the shafts using a Bauer B-36 (367-kNm torque) Rotary Drill custom fitted by A.H. Beck Foundation to a Liebherr 883 crane.
This project consisted of a total of 24 drilled shafts foundations, 96 inches in diameter with depths up to 100 feet. Rock sockets of 5 feet into basalt with hardness over 8,000 psi.
A. H. Beck Foundation Company installed drilled shafts to support the many bridges of the Interstate 4/Crosstown Expressway Connector (a limited-access, elevated toll road connecting the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway to Interstate 4 in Tampa, Florida). Construction of the drilled shafts required 5 drill rigs working around the clock to install 1,200 shafts with diameters ranging from 36 inches to 90 inches in diameter. With highly variable subsurface soils (predominantly sands and clays overlying a Karst Limestone formation), the foundation depths ranged from 40 to 150 feet. This unpredictable subsurface created construction challenges. A. H. Beck used a method of sectional, temporary steel casings to stabilize the overburdened soils. This process allows additional temporary casings to be added, thus ensuring a stabile shaft.
Project consisted of two 12 foot diameter drilled shafts 130 feet deep. While the majority of the structures were constructed with a pile cluster/footing foundation, two piers required single large diameter drilled shafts due to the limited width of the construction zone and to eliminate the differential settlement of the embankment. A. H. Beck worked with Dorsett Brothers Concrete Supply, Doran Steel, TNT Crane & Rigging, and PumpCo to manufacture a 12’ diameter auger, mix 3000 Bbl of bentonite mineral slurry, set 12’ diameter x 20’ long permanent casing and excavate the 12’ diameter x 130’ deep slurry displaced drilled shaft.