Dr. Fermín Sanchez and his team was tasked with the construction of a highway from Tepic City to Puerto Vallarta City on the Western Coast of Mexico. In this case study, he encountered a significant mass of rock sliding close to a tunnel portal due to an open cut, which was caused by the re-activation of a geological fault.
In this case study, we show how Finite Element Method (FEM) analyses, combined with InSAR remote sensing monitoring, helped to complete an embankment project on soft ground and peat, safely and cost-effectively.
With RAM Concept and PLAXIS, WSP created a more efficient design that reduced material and labor costs.
CNI Ingenieros Consultores SAS Bogota, Cundinamarca, Colombia Building Heavy Materials in a Busy Pedestrian-trafficked Area Pontifical Xavierian University’s master development plan includes a new, 14,089-square-meter, 15-story engineering laboratory and research building with three basement levels. CNI Ingenieros Consultores was tasked with designing the glass-and-steel structure. However, they faced several challenges, including being mindful of the project’s impact on neighboring buildings, the complexity of the anchoring systems and excavations of up to 16 meters to reach the foundation, and pouring 700 cubic meters of concrete for a laboratory’s reaction slab and walls. They also had to safely transfer materials and heavy-metal structural elements by crane, following strict industrial safety procedures to avoid endangering students and faculty walking on campus. Managing Careful Coordination among Project Team Members CNI Ingenieros realized that they had to plan carefully to coordinate the architecture and project installation. After considering their options, they decided that robust analysis software would help them quickly resolve issues, while enabling them to examine other scenarios. They also needed to improve the flow of information between them and the architect. Additionally, since the basement floors were made of concrete and the tower structure was metal with a structural façade composed of
city of Almaty, Kazakhstan Facts ProjectWise and Bentley’s open applications streamlined workflows and communication, optimizing scheduling across 500 worksites. Leveraging Bentley’s modeling and visualization software facilitated simultaneous design and construction. Project Bringing Gold Production into Kyrgyzstan To eliminate exporting ore for processing and enable gold production within Kyrgyzstan, a decision was made in 2018 to build a gold plant in the mountainous Talas region, nearby the Dzhamgyr mine. The USD 75 million project included constructing the main building, a crushing and screening complex, a laboratory, storage pond, tailings storage facility, poison and ore storage areas, shift camps for operating personnel, and new roadways and accesses. AAEngineering delivered the winning bid for this engineering, procurement, and construction project that was located in a dangerously seismic area. In addition to the altitude and seismicity complications, AAEngineering had to overcome technical, engineering, and coordination challenges, as well as meet strict environmental standards amid a short construction period and an ensuing global pandemic. Solution Open Applications Provide Integrated Solution AAEngineering selected ProjectWise as the coordinated platform, combining it with Bentley’s integrated digital applications in a cloud-based environment to share project information and optimize communication and scheduling among 500 work sites. They also used ContextCapture
Rock at depth is subjected to stresses resulting from the weight of the overlying strata and from locked-in stresses of tectonic origin. When an opening is excavated in this rock, the stress field is locally disrupted and a new set of stresses are induced in the rock surrounding the opening. A knowledge of the magnitudes and directions of these in situ and induced stresses is an essential component of underground excavation design since, in many cases, the strength of the rock is exceeded and the resulting instability can have serious consequences on the behavior of the excavations.