Courtesy Rutgers CAIT/Drew Noel Photography ©2015

Courtesy Rutgers CAIT/Drew Noel Photography ©2015

Courtesy Rutgers CAIT/Drew Noel Photography ©2015

On October 14, Rutgers Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation (CAIT) in Piscataway, New Jersey, unveiled the Bridge Evaluation and Accelerated Structural Testing Lab (BEAST), the world’s first accelerated testing facility for full-scale bridges.

Applied Research Associates, Inc, (ARA), an international research and engineering company, designed and built the core of testing facility in their Randolph, Vermont location. DuBois & King supported ARA with civil/site design, permitting, and structural engineering services including design of concrete abutments and foundation design for the environmental simulation enclosure. Site engineering included utility relocations, coordination of electrical design for 1200 KVA and as-built survey of the rail system.

According to the CAIT website, the BEAST will be used to “quantitatively measure stresses and deterioration caused by extreme traffic and environmental loading on full-scale bridge systems—and do so in an extremely compressed time frame. Data from the BEAST will allow us to project future performance and longevity of bridge materials and components. The BEAST subjects bridge specimens to rapid-cycling environmental changes and extreme traffic loading to induce and speed up deterioration as much as 30 times, making it possible to simulate 15 to 20 years of wear-and-tear in just a few months.”

“We anticipate being able to validate how various bridge designs, construction materials, and elements can be expected to perform decades from now and give bridge owners empirical evidence to support decision making,” says CAIT research engineering project manager Andrés Roda.

Additional information can be found here:

http://cait.rutgers.edu/beast/ready-to-roll

Excavation is nearing completion and the contractor is pouring concrete on the design-build culvert replacement project in Ryegate. DuBois & King is the Lead Design Engineer for the design-build project in Ryegate that will replace culverts that convey Manchester Brook under US Route 5 and the Washington County Railroad. The deteriorated undersized culverts contributed to flooding of US Route 5 and the backwater jeopardized the integrity of the roadway and rail embankments. The culverts are deeply buried structures (over 60 ft under the railroad embankment), with steep embankments on both sides of the roadway and rail line.

Working with the Vermont Agency of Transportation, the design-build team of DuBois & King and Engineers Construction, Inc., of Williston, Vermont, developed an alternative technical concept structure that consists of two 32-ft-wide by 16-ft-high, cast-in-place, reinforced concrete arch culverts beneath the roadway and rail line. The base technical concept would have resulted in a completely buried structure with a length of 320 ft. The alternative concept being implemented is separate culverts beneath the road and railroad with a curved structure open to daylight in the median. The new culverts are 144 ft and 128 ft in length, and will increase the hydraulic capacity by 25 times the existing capacity. The alternative concept provides for: savings in initial construction costs, better access for maintenance, greatly improved hydraulic capacity, safer conditions for future inspections, improved aquatic habitat, and improved service life.

The new culverts are being installed using an open-cut approach. Temporary sheet piles are being driven up to 70 ft deep through the rail and roadway embankments for support as excavation proceeds down to the bottom of the culvert footings. Temporary bridges were designed to maintain rail and highway traffic over the excavations. Design issues include providing a 100-year service life for the new culverts; support for temporary roadway and rail bridges; significant support of excavation measures; protection and maintenance of the brook throughout construction; and limiting settlement of footings to 1 inch or less. Construction is scheduled to be substantially complete by December 2015.

See the drone video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwi33vaR7Vs

DuBois & King is pleased to announce that Jonathan Ashley has joined the firm as a Senior Civil/Environmental Engineer. Mr. Ashley has 20 years of professional experience, including site development, brownfield and hazardous site remediation, permitting, and engineering services for roadways, slope stability, stormwater, and water/sewer projects throughout Vermont and New York. Jon is a resident of Whiting and works out of the out firm’s Randolph office.