Abstract:
One of the most-traveled highways in the country, Interstate 95 (I-95), which stretches from Maine to Florida along the east coast, is currently undergoing major reconstruction over a significant portion of its length. The corridor of I-95 outside of Philadelphia sees between 120,000 and 200,000 vehicles per day, making it a critical segment of the highway. With the potential to disrupt so much daily traffic, construction activities planned for this major artery of the east coast must be efficiently selected and executed.
Rigid inclusions have a history of providing this efficiency, not only during construction activities to limit project durations, but also in design redundancy, which limits the risk of future impact to commuters. Ground improvement is installed unreinforced and to intermediate depths compared to deep foundations, leading to rapid construction. Greater quantity of elements leads to a more redundant design, limiting risk inherited by the owner. And because the ground improvement system relies on sharing load between the rigid inclusions and in-situ soil, the support of the roadways is varied to provide a system optimized for specific parameters of the profile. Ultimately, this efficiency provides economy to the client and taxpayers, which is realized in both quantity and quality of funded projects.
The following presentation highlights a case study of a project executed along the I-95 corridor outside of Philadelphia. The case study provides an overview of the site and soil conditions, examines the original piling design concept, reviews the changes made to accommodate a rigid inclusion alternative, and analyzes the impacts to the project timeline, cost, and performance.