With bedrock more than 200 ft below street level, the fifty-eight-story Millennium Tower, like most downtown high-rises, is founded on piles driven through soft, compressible clay soils deposited by the San Francisco Bay and extending into a...
During construction of the ITC Crossing development, sections of corrugated metal pipe (CMP) and reinforced concrete pipe (RCP) in the storm drainage system were found to be structurally distressed and damaged. SGH investigated the extent and...
After constructing the first 1.5 mi of the Stroube Drain cast-in-place, reinforced concrete box culvert, the owner discovered the design did not consider live loads for the most severe traffic orientation. The owner wanted to know if cracking...
The concrete building at 1101 Second Avenue, originally developed in 1967 as the headquarters for Washington Mutual Savings Bank, was designed by the northwest modernist architect, Paul Thiry. Rockwood Capital (Rockwood) acquired the...
On 25 January 1971, the sixteen-story apartment building at 2000 Commonwealth Avenue progressively collapsed during concrete placement for the mechanical penthouse floor slab above the main roof. SGH investigated the cause of the collapse,...
SGH was the structural engineer for the new Charles H. Giancarlo Engineering Laboratories building at Brown University. The building, with a prominent position on campus, works as an entrance to the engineering and physics complex. ...
When pieces of the 4 in. thick limestone facade began falling off the 500 ft tall Miami-Dade Government Center, SGH investigated the cause of distress.
When the old San Luis County Government Center building had reached its capacity, the City of San Luis Obispo decided to build a new structure to provide additional office space. The new San Luis Obispo County Government Center is a four-story,...
For the R.O. Pickard Environmental Centre digester expansion program, the owner's engineer envisioned two structurally-identical, modified, egg-shaped digesters founded on drilled piers extending 80 ft to bedrock. The general contractor elected...
In the event of an earthquake, hospitals must remain standing and should be functional, if possible. The poor performance of older hospitals observed following the 1994 Northridge earthquake forced the State of California to reassess seismic...
Several commercially available software packages automate the structural design process for new buildings, allowing engineers to deliver projects with unparalleled efficiency. These software packages contain structural engineering standards (e.g...
Seismic PRAs have become more common in the nuclear power industry following the Fukushima accident caused by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. In order to provide best estimates of the risk, the seismic fragilities should be as realistic as...
Research and experience has shown that given specific loading scenarios and reinforcement configurations, reinforced concrete members may experience nonductile shear failures that can occur in sudden and brittle modes, often leading to structural...
Recent advancements in automatic reinforcing bar bending machines allow fabrication of continuous transverse reinforcement (CTR) with 90-degree transverse bends. The resulting closed, continuous reinforcement increases the speed by...
Abstract: A contractor erected multiple reinforced concrete mat foundations over the spring and summer construction season to support large tower structures. Six weeks into the construction, after nearly half of the nineteen foundations were cast...
By: Gustavo Tumialan, Nestore Galati, Antonio Nanni, Paul H. Ziehl
The primary objective of in-situ load testing is to assess the safety and serviceability of an existing structural system with respect to a particular load effect. At this time, the most appropriate loading level and procedure, as well as the...