Division of ARA
If you’re familiar with the CPT University then you may have had the chance to see our article: Why Are There So Many Kinds of CPT Rigs? As you may have read, there are many different rigs available; but depending upon the types of surface conditions or the terrain, one option may be more suitable for your project over another. Read on to take a deeper dive into a few different examples of CPT rigs, uses, and applications. [Read more…]
We’re proud of the relationship we have with our long time customers. We succeed together. One of these groups is GEI Consultants, which has been delivering engineering services around the globe since 1970. Sean Brady, Senior Instrumentation Specialist with GEI, provided CPT University with background on their operation as it pertains to their CPT efforts.
GEI is a medium-size engineering firm with around 700 employees in the United States. Our business line within GEI is Geotechnical, non-destructive testing, and geophysics.
Our engineering team has designed over 75% of downtown Chicago’s foundations and most of the tallest buildings in the world. We often are part of the design team when difficult and challenging soils are encountered.
We perform CPT’s on earthen dams/embankments, river sediment depths, USCOE projects from Ft. Peck Montana to New York, RR alignments, bridge embankments, and Power plants.
A little of everything you can imagine from Water, RR bridges, Landfills, the stability of tail basins for the mines. We also oversee other companies performing CPT. We just worked in Asantana, Kazahkstan overseeing a new energy exposition 2016 project for both SPT’s and CPT. Also have overseen CPT testing in Doha, Qatar.
We have over 30 years of CPT testing experience. In the late 80’s we purchased a 30T CPT truck and traveled around the US performing CPT on challenging geotechnical projects. In the mid-90’s we sold our truck and started to perform CPT testing behind drill rigs. At the time we had a fleet of 18 drill rigs from track-mounted, ATV, truck-mounted, Barge mounted, etc. We get involved with delicate soils all the time.
In some cases even when continuous SPT sampling you can’t always detect small seams that we’re interested in. This is where CPT comes into the picture on a lot of projects. One larger failure project was the TVA tailing basin project in Kingston, TN. We used CPT with continuous sampling for the root cause investigation.
We have two complete Vertek Hogentogler systems with 5T, 10T tension cones, conductivity module, seismic, pore pressure, and temp. We have had great success pushing through challenging soils throughout the United States. We’ve worked with MN DOT helping them complete backlog when their equipment was fully utilized.
Our typical production behind a drill rig is ~500 linear feet per day pushing 20’ soundings, and ~600 linear feet per day pushing 100’ soundings. We have had great seismic data and have compared it with both Downhole and Crosshole seismic data collected at the same location at Nuclear and Coal plants. We’ve performed CPT on any type of soil or location imaginable. The Key is to know the gear and the limitations.
Keep doing what we’re good at. Difficult projects that require in-situ sampling with correlation to SPTs. We are currently trying to grow our business model in the mid-Atlantic. We have seen some more potential clients looking for more of an expert than just an operator of the testing.
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Land Concierge Inc.’s subsurface technology manager Hideyuki Sato and colleague Yoshihiro Imai visited Vertek CPT’s manufacturing facility for a demonstration of our S4 Cone Penetrometer Test (CPT) push system and Data Acquisition Systems (DAS).
Land Concierge Inc. has been a customer of Vertek since 2009 and is our sales agent in Japan. Contact Mr. Sato with your Japanese soil testing equipment needs and questions. [Read more…]
Compaction is an engineering term used to describe the ability of a soil type to be treated with mechanical energy and compressed such that air voids are removed. With individual grains compressed to remove air voids, it becomes more difficult for the soil to be compressed to ‘settle’ further on its own.
The strength of the soil in loads other than compression can be increased because the individual particles within the soil become interlocked and friction can become a more important function of the soil behavior. Compacted soil, because air spaces between the particles are reduced has lower hydraulic conductivity (passes water less easily under a given pressure). [Read more…]
In 1997 Vertek delivered our first of many Accelerated Transportation Loading Systems (ATLaS). Ohio University published this video, dated in 2012 of the pavement load tester in use at their Accelerated Pavement Load Facility.