Dr. Cerato’s Blog
Did you miss my keynote presentation? I’m sure you are disappointed – but while I work to video capture the presentation and release it to a wider audience, check out this great video cut of our helical pile seismic research project at the University of California San Diego. Thanks again goes to Aaron Wheeler of Torcsill Foundations for not only vetting, hiring and overseeing the videographers onsite, but also cutting and editing all the documentaries of our test!
Enjoy!
The University of Oklahoma’s Geotechnical Engineering research group has a close relationship with many of the local geotechnical engineering consulting firms in the area. These firms donate drill rig time and in situ testing demonstrations for class exercises as well as provide student event and conference sponsorship. In addition, Terracon has been supporting select OU Geotechnical Engineering graduate students with scholarship monies for the past seven years. We appreciate their scholarship support of our students and encourage more companies to join our consortium. Phil Wood, engineering manager of the Oklahoma City Terracon office, came to present the check to us recently. You can read about their additional philanthropic efforts here: http://www.terracon.com/2016/07/12/terracon-foundation-awards-105500-in-grants/
If you are interested in contributing to our student success, please contact me.
Come and join the Deep Foundation Institute’s Committee on Helical Piles and Tiebacks for a great 1-day seminar in sunny Ontario, California on Thursday, August 11th! Register today! http://www.dfi.org/dfieventlp.asp?13268
I’ll be giving the keynote presentation from 11:00 am – 11:45 am about our exciting full-scale seismic test on the outdoor shake table at the University of California- San Diego in February, and releasing some newly cut video that you won’t want to miss.
https://www.regonline.com/builder/site/tab2.aspx?EventID=1841541
Success! The Helical Pile and Tieback Committee finagled a prime time 30 minute time-slot during the plenary session for my seismic research presentation today – and even though the crowd was late for lunch because the session started late after break, we managed to hold a packed room for a 25 minute power-packed presentation. Unfortunately, I wasn’t given the opportunity to answer questions from the crowd in my last 5-minutes because lunch was being served, so if you have any questions please email me at acerato@ou.edu or post a comment here and we can have a group discussion. The video that we debuted today can be found below and there is much more to come during the August 8-10 Specialty Conference on Helical Piles and Tiebacks!
http://www.dfi.org/dfieventlp.asp?13268
I hope to see you there!
Enjoy!
Many thanks to Aaron Wheeler of Torcsill Foundations for cutting this video for me!
I just read a great post by one of our Helical Pile Seismic Research Project Sponsors, TechnoMetal Post, www.technometalpost.com, that talked about the recent January 24, 2016 7.1 Magnitude Alaskan Earthquake and its effect on residential structures using helical piles as foundation elements. They did a post-earthquake reconnaissance and noted no damage to the helical piles or the buildings. Great news! Read more about their project on Helical Pile World http://www.helicalpileworld.com/techno_metal_post_earthquakes_helical_piles.html.
The helical pile tests we completed in San Diego in February were a huge success. Not only have we been organizing, reducing and analyzing data, we have been watching the 4 TB (plus) of video files and are starting to create smaller clips of our testing to share. This particular rough clip of a series of shakes shows just how well a group of four 5.5″ pipe helical piles with a single 10″ helix hold up to multiple large shakes. There is roughly 20,000 lbs of axial load spread between the four piles. The accelerometer’s at the middle of the skid mass read roughly 2.5 g’s. Enjoy!
If you are intrigued and interested in this video and the subject matter, make sure to come see me in Chicago at Super Pile (http://www.dfi.org/dfieventlp.asp?13262) on Wednesday, June 8th at 11:45 am or at the Deep Foundation Institute (DFI) Helical Pile and Tieback Committee’s (HPTC) Specialty Seminar (http://www.dfi.org/dfieventlp.asp?13268) in Ontario, California on Thursday, August 9th at 11:00 am to see more cool video – complete with drone footage of the site and professionally shot interviews of the players involved. You won’t want to miss it! Register today.
Right after we got back from San Diego, my research team went into a local elementary school and taught them all about how important foundation systems are in keeping structures, buildings and their inhabitants safe during earthquakes. Check out our awesome kindergarten, first and second grade engineers-in-training. They LOVED learning about earthquakes and building piles that withstood the shaking. Enjoy the short video!
If you are interested in teaching students about earthquakes using this module, please go to https://nees.org/resources/3651 to see the step-by-step instructions. The website also links the module components to K-12 standards.
I modified our original module, which was geared toward 8th graders, to focus on younger students, which was very easy to do!
Interested in learning about the results of our recent seismic test on helical piles?
Don’t miss my plenary session presentation titled “Large Shake Table Test on Helical Piles: Test Program and Preliminary Results” on the main stage at DFI’s SuperPile ’16 on June 7-9, 2016, at The Westin Michigan Avenue Chicago. The presentation is on Wednesday, June 8th from 11:45 am to 12:15 pm.
Register now! www.dfi-superpile.org
(as posted on Linked IN)
The seismic shake test on helical piles went so well! A great big shout out to the National Science Foundation, the Deep Foundation Institute and all of the Helical Pile and Tieback Committee Sponsors who made this test possible.
Another big shout out to my dream-team helical pile installation team from Torcsill Foundations, LLC (www.torcsill.com) for their continuous, unwavering on-site support of this project. They did anything I asked them to do, from installing helical piles overhead in the large shaker box, to splicing three-wire strain gages, to fabricating and welding material onsite, to loading weights on my piles, and in general just being good guys! Torcsill donated all of this support for a full three weeks and were the major reason this project went forward and stayed on schedule. I could not have done the project without them!
My blog (this very blog) has been featured in ANOTHER blog! How exciting! Check it out!
http://www.sturdystructural.com/blog/featuring-the-largest-earthquake-simulator-in-the-united-states
We continue to work on reducing the data. To date, we have the ten piles and all the strain gauge data organized by pile and location and bending moments (and axial loads – although we’re suspicious of a few readings) calculated. We are working on sand bed, pile head and box accelerometers this week. Getting it done!
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