Tall Order
Successive earthquakes have damaged the 32-story, 460 ft (140 m) tall Los Angeles City Hall, built in 1926. Masonry infill and concrete walls have cracked, and the terra cotta cladding...
Back from the Brink
The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, the tallest brick lighthouse in the United States, has been moved to prevent it from toppling into the sea as a result of coastal erosion. Engineers from...
Sinkhole Solution (Available in Geo-Environmental Special Issue only)
In the summer of 1998, a large sinkhole developed overnight in the center of the two-year-old Eagle Ridge Mall in Haines City, FL. The surface depression measured approximately 4.3 m deep...
Special Geotechnical Testing: Central Artery/Tunnel Project in Boston, Massachusetts
The Central Artery/Tunnel Project (CA/T) in Boston, Massachusetts, is the largest urban highway construction project in the history of the interstate system. The magnitude and complexity...
Walls of Defense
During a bomb blast, most physical damage and injury occurs when exterior walls fail to protect building occupants. Exterior walls designed to withstand exterior blasts and to break away...
Sim City of Angels
Using advanced computing techniques, UCLA researchers are developing a virtual model of the entire 4,000 sp mi Los Angeles basin. Accurate to the level of graffiti on the walls and store...
Paper Mill Sludge Landfill Cover Construction
A considerable amount of experience has been acquired from a number of completed paper mill sludge landfill covers within the United States. This paper focuses on practical guidelines...
Test Wall Promises Big Savings (Available in Geo-Environmental Special Issue Only)
A new kind of retaining wall is being tested in Texas at a National Geotechnical Experiment site. The wall is a variation of soil-mixing that uses fewer columns, which saves time, materials...
Grouts and Grouting
A Potpourri of Projects
This proceedings,
Better Salt Storage
Facing tighter maintenance budgets and stringent environmental regulations, many highway departments are designing and building innovative structures to store road salt. One such structure...
Containing Contaminants (Available Only in Geoenvironmental Special Issue)
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy are currently in favor of containing contaminants and either remediating on site or simply capping such materials within...
Clear Sailing
Three recent projects--the Conoid Atrium Wall at the Federal Courthouse in Boston, an addition to the U.S. Bureau of Census building in Baltimore, and a new University of Connecticut academic...
Cutting Off Water in Queens
New York's Transit Authority wanted to dig a new tunnel for a Queens subway connection, but first contractors had to wall-off the potentially contaminated groundwater nearby....
Historic Upgrades in San Francisco
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake seriously damaged many of the historical buildings that compose the San Francisco Civic Center complex. As the complex serves as a critical cultural and...
Old Aswan Dam
Egypt's Aswan Dam is almost 100 years old, and engineers performed tests of the masonry, conducting petrographic and chemical analyses. The High and Aswan Dam Authority of...
In Situ Remediation of the Geoenvironment
The progress in the development and implementation of techniques for the remediation of contaminated soil and ground water has been and continues to be rapid. These proceedings focus on...
Wonderwall
A Superfund site near Seattle was surrounded by a 2,200-ft-long soil-bentonite wall to keep contaminants from entering nearby water sources. An earlier remediation effort had failed to...
Historic Downtown Dilemma (Available only in Structural Engineering special issue)
Many older commercial masonry buildings built of locally quarried stone or fired brick in downtown areas suffer from roof leaks. Because a studwall cavity often is located between the...
Plumbing the Quality of a Sewer System
Consultants in Phoenix were recently charged with assessing the city's sewer system, many feet of which were laid without plastic lining to protect them. Developing a capital...
Re-engineering Cowboy Heaven (Available only in
On a wooded hill overlooking the north end of Oklahoma City sits one of the foremost repositories of this country's Western heritage, the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. Contained...
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