51
june 2014
international
construction
FOUNDATIONS
Piling it on
Bedding down Port of Tilbury
Cellular foundation installed to re-open berth
I
n early 2014, the soil foundations of BerthNo 1 at the Port of Tilbury on theRiver Thames in London, UK
were overloaded and failed. In order to get the berth reopened as soon as possible, civil and structural
engineering company, Haydn Evans Consultingwas brought in to design a stable, practical and cost
effective solution over the soils.
The solutionwas a 1m thick cellular foundationmattress. Themain contractor, TamdownGroup installed
themattress, whichwas fabricated on-site using Tensar’s Uniaxial and Triax Geogrids, supplied by Burdens.
The geogridmattresswas filledwith 6F2 granular capping fill.
Finally, a high visibility layer was placed just over the filledmattress and below a final granular capping
layer in order towarn against any future excavation of the structure below.
JohnDixon, Tensar’s area civil engineer said, “Due to the nature of the soft alluvial soils by theRiver
Thames, which in this case also had only residual strength due to pre-shearing, we had to deal with
challenging soil parameters, whichmade it a complicated and interesting project to respond to.”
The project was completed in twoweeks.
Soilmec’s SR-45
Tier 4 drilling rig is
designed for large
diameter drilling of
cased or uncased
bore piles
work on the new high-speed rail line, linking Tangier with
Casablanca.
When completed, it will be the first high-speed rail line to be
constructed inAfrica andwill cut the journey time between the
two cities from six to two hours.
The BSP CX110 hydraulic hammer is being used to drive
foundation piles for a rail viaduct, which has a span of 250 m
over the riverQued Sebou.
The CX110 piling hammer, supplied with a HP125 power
pack, was fittedwith a 9 tonne dropweight, legs, inserts and cap
suitable for driving a range of Arcelor AZ sheet piles.The piles,
Soilmec’s SR-75 hydraulic
drilling rig is suitable for
low-headroom drilling as it
offers a lowmast.
