Location
New York, New York
Date
15 Apr 2004, 7:00pm - 8:30pm
Abstract
Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Geofoam lightweight fill permitted elevation of a loading dock and access roadway to facilitate offloading of banquet/convention center and hotel supplies, products, etc. directly into the second floor of a development underlain with highly compressible soils, in Hollywood, Florida. Similar roadways had been previously constructed using conventional filling techniques and have resulted in continual maintenance problems and grade separation between pile supported structures and roadways supported on filled ground. The South Florida barrier island geology and interior mangrove swamp areas, which are reclaimed land formed through the use of dredging and hydraulic filling operations in the early 1960’s, require specialized site preparation techniques. Typically, preloading, or surcharging, where feasible, is utilized to pre-compress the underlying compressible organic silts and peat deposits, and often structural relieving platforms/hollow filled structural ramps are constructed to prevent continual maintenance of critical on-grade supported appurtenances. In this instance, EPS Geofoam lightweight fill was ideally suited to accomplish the Developer’s and Contractor’s objectives with their fast-track schedule and site constraints. This paper provides a brief description of the typical South Florida geology, compressibility characteristics of the underlying soft compressible organic deposits, and our settlement predictions, which showed the need for preloading, structural support or use of one of the first applications of lightweight fill in South Florida. An in-depth settlement monitoring and instrumentation program was conducted to confirm the expected behavior of the lightweight fill and the underlying subsurface behavior. Induced stresses through the overlying pavement and fill material are provided and the general construction procedures utilized are summarized.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
5th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
University of Missouri--Rolla
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 2004 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
Meyer, M. E.; Zhou, L.; and Gonzalez, C. M., "The Use of EPS Geofoam Lightweight Fill in Hollywood, Fl" (2004). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 12.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/5icchge/session08/12
The Use of EPS Geofoam Lightweight Fill in Hollywood, Fl
New York, New York
Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Geofoam lightweight fill permitted elevation of a loading dock and access roadway to facilitate offloading of banquet/convention center and hotel supplies, products, etc. directly into the second floor of a development underlain with highly compressible soils, in Hollywood, Florida. Similar roadways had been previously constructed using conventional filling techniques and have resulted in continual maintenance problems and grade separation between pile supported structures and roadways supported on filled ground. The South Florida barrier island geology and interior mangrove swamp areas, which are reclaimed land formed through the use of dredging and hydraulic filling operations in the early 1960’s, require specialized site preparation techniques. Typically, preloading, or surcharging, where feasible, is utilized to pre-compress the underlying compressible organic silts and peat deposits, and often structural relieving platforms/hollow filled structural ramps are constructed to prevent continual maintenance of critical on-grade supported appurtenances. In this instance, EPS Geofoam lightweight fill was ideally suited to accomplish the Developer’s and Contractor’s objectives with their fast-track schedule and site constraints. This paper provides a brief description of the typical South Florida geology, compressibility characteristics of the underlying soft compressible organic deposits, and our settlement predictions, which showed the need for preloading, structural support or use of one of the first applications of lightweight fill in South Florida. An in-depth settlement monitoring and instrumentation program was conducted to confirm the expected behavior of the lightweight fill and the underlying subsurface behavior. Induced stresses through the overlying pavement and fill material are provided and the general construction procedures utilized are summarized.
