The shift toward the use of helical piles as a permanent foundation option for bridges, high-rise buildings, residential and industrial facilities, telecommunication and power transmission towers necessitates the immediate need to develop efficient and reliable design tools. The use of helical piles for permanent applications is driven by the recent development of equipment that can facilitate the installation of large capacity piles and the need for an effective foundation element that can handle the rapid growth and replacement of infrastructure in North America. This requires that the current design practices need to be shifted from empirical approaches to a more rational and methodological design approach. The design approach should consider different soil types, interaction between helixes, and the effects of pile geometry.
This presentation summarizes the available design approaches for helical piles and identifies the main differences between them. The main objective of this presentation is to validate a design method for helical piles installed in oilsands. In this presentation the results of several pile load test programs carried out at by Almita including a fast-tracked industrial camp project, located north of Fort MacKay, Alberta, will be summarized. The load testing program included testing single helix and double helixes piles embedded into clay till or oilsands and subjected to uplift, compression and lateral loads. The result of the load testing programs presented in this paper are compared to the theoretical values. The results of the load testing programs confirmed that the screw pile is a viable and acceptable deep foundation for construction of heavily structures.
With the ever increasing complexity and associated increases in costs of many major engineering projects the management and resolution of contractual disputes has become even more important issue to both the client and the engineer/contractor. This presentation will open with a brief review of the causes, magnitude and probabilities of project disputes based upon the authors’s extensive experience in the dispute resolution business. The focus will be on defining specific proven strategies to manage disputes for each main phase of a project. The presentation will conclude with an overview of a process tool to evaluate the potential for disputes as well as the overall project risk at any stage of the project
The presentation provides an introduction into what is becoming a major focus of many renewable energy developments. With increasing concerns about global warming and the impact of greenhouse gases on the planet’s climate there is ever increasing pressure to generate electric power from some form of renewable energy and wind generated electricity has become one of the more successful solutions to this problem.
This presentation looks at the impact of desktop computers on engineering calculations. It will illustrate how the roles of engineers in the drawing office and engineering calculations have been transformed over the past number of years. To meet the demands of the future there is a need for change and this presentation seeks to change engineer’s attitudes about Microsoft Office tools. It looks at three key areas; a comparison of conventional versus electronic calculations, defaults in engineering applications and the cost benefit analysis of change.
The construction of the Glenmore/Elbow Drive/5th Street SW interchange has been undertaken by the City of Calgary to improve traffic flow at one of the most severe bottlenecks on Calgary’s road system. Budgeted to cost approximately $100 million the improvements will allow for unrestricted movement on the Glenmore Trail from the existing junction at Ogden Road SE to the traffic lights at 37th Street SW together with additional traffic lanes between the new interchange and the Glenmore Causeway and 14th Street SW. The complete project is scheduled to take approximately three years to complete and will be welcomed by thousands of motorists who use this route to commute to and from work every day.
In today’s world there are increasing pressures to either eliminate or significantly reduce emissions from industrial processes to very low levels. Emissions such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) are among those that are required to be controlled to extremely low levels and the presentation will discuss methods by which such reductions can be attained.
This presentation will discuss the complicated and lengthy environmental and permitting processes that have been undertaken for the first proposed major gas pipeline from Canada’s Arctic regions to southern markets.
The Formula Student (Formula SAE in the USA) car project, sponsored in part by the IMechE and IET, is an annual event in which university students are challenged to design, build and operate a small racing car based upon a set of predetermined specifications. Entries are judged on a number of factors including cost, design, presentation, acceleration, skid pad performance, endurance and fuel economy. The University of Calgary submitted its first entry in 2006 and did reasonably well but the University of Toronto team has been a winner in each of the past three years.