Improving Soil Stability of Flood Control Culverts Under Amtrak Rails with Injection Grouts-PPT Presentation

PPT Presentation

Pdf Summary

The City of Meriden, Connecticut, needed to reduce chronic downtown flooding by routing Harbor Brook overflow beneath an active Amtrak railway. The project called for two steel casing pipes, installed by pipe jacking beneath the tracks, to carry 60-inch HDPE culverts. With only five feet of soil cover and loose, silty sand above and below the water table, ground stabilization was necessary to protect the railway during construction.<br /><br />Although the original specifications called for sodium silicate grout, the project team selected AV-100 acrylamide grout because it could permeate fine soils, perform in groundwater, and be set to a controlled cure time. Steel injection pipes were driven through sheet piling at the rail embankments, and grout was injected into the loose soil. The treatment made the non-cohesive ground behave more like clay, allowing hand mining and pipe jacking to proceed. The steel casings advanced successfully without destabilizing the soil supporting the tracks.<br /><br />The presentation also describes laboratory and field work on grout durability. It cites research indicating that underground soil relative humidity remains near 100% and reports minimal moisture loss in AV-100 samples under high-humidity conditions. The authors conclude that the grout’s sealing properties can persist over time.

Keywords

Meriden Connecticut

downtown flooding

Harbor Brook

Amtrak railway

pipe jacking

steel casing pipes

HDPE culverts

ground stabilization

AV-100 acrylamide grout

soil durability