Alternative Title
Paper No. 9.06
Location
St. Louis, Missouri
Date
12 Mar 1998, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm
Abstract
We were faced with an extraordinary geotechnical challenge; our client wanted to support large tilt wa11 buildings and pavements for a 32 acre Commercial Shopping Center on 5 to 8 feet of saturated, I lo 3 blow/foot hydraulically placed fill. To make matters more difficult, the site was in the seismically active Napa Valley. We offered 3 solutions; 2 conventional, and 1 unconventional. Our conventional solutions consisted of: 1) piers founded in the normally consolidated clay below the hydraulic fill, or, 2) over-excavation and replacement of the upper 5 to 8 feet of highly unstable soil. Our unconventional solution consisted of Short Aggregate Piers (Geopier or SAP) to mitigate settlement for moderate building loads. Because of economics, speed and fear of the unknown over-excavation costs, our client chose Geopiers to support the large buildings.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
4th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
University of Missouri--Rolla
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 1998 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Blackburn, Thomas W. and Farrell, Tom M., "Shopping Center Saved by Short Aggregate Piers" (1998). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 10.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/4icchge/4icchge-session09/10
Shopping Center Saved by Short Aggregate Piers
St. Louis, Missouri
We were faced with an extraordinary geotechnical challenge; our client wanted to support large tilt wa11 buildings and pavements for a 32 acre Commercial Shopping Center on 5 to 8 feet of saturated, I lo 3 blow/foot hydraulically placed fill. To make matters more difficult, the site was in the seismically active Napa Valley. We offered 3 solutions; 2 conventional, and 1 unconventional. Our conventional solutions consisted of: 1) piers founded in the normally consolidated clay below the hydraulic fill, or, 2) over-excavation and replacement of the upper 5 to 8 feet of highly unstable soil. Our unconventional solution consisted of Short Aggregate Piers (Geopier or SAP) to mitigate settlement for moderate building loads. Because of economics, speed and fear of the unknown over-excavation costs, our client chose Geopiers to support the large buildings.
