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Geotechnical News • December 2013
29
GEOTECHNICAL INSTRUMENTATION NEWS
Introduction by John Dunnicliff, Editor
This is the seventy-sixth episode of GIN. One article this time, and
also a discussion of a previous article, together with the authors’
replies.
Costa Concordia—watch this
space!
It was described by the media in
England as “An absolutely sensa-
tional engineering spectacle” and “A
monumental feat of engineering”.
The righting of the Italian cruise ship
Costa Concordia—“The Parbuckling
Project” (www.theparbucklingproject.
com) - see the video “The Parbuckling
phase in 90 seconds”. Unless you’ve
been on the moon during the last few
months, you’ll know about this. I have
a promise of an article in GIN that will
describe the measurements used to
control the rotation.
Continuing education courses
In the previous GIN I said that there
will be no more of these courses in
Florida, but perhaps elsewhere. Plans
are now well underway to start a new
series in beautiful Tuscany, Italy, on
June 4-6, 2014. By the time you read
this, the website should be up and run-
ning:
www.geotechnicalmonitoring.
com.
In addition to the content of the
Florida courses, there will be substan-
tial content on remote methods for
monitoring deformation—my Italian
colleagues are experts at this. There
will also be six sessions on case his-
tories and lessons learned. Additional
information is on page 35.
Come and join us in the 13
th
century
castle! The wine is good, too!
Graduate level course on
instrumentation in New Orleans
The Civil and Environmental Engi-
neering department at the University
of New Orleans offers a graduate-level
course on geotechnical instrumenta-
tion. The course includes:
• Soil and rock behavior
• Soil properties affecting geotechni-
cal instrumentation
• Field monitoring principles
• Systematic approach to geotechni-
cal instrumentation
• Review of geotechnical instrumen-
tation hardware
• Theory and field measurement of
deformation, groundwater pres-
sure, stresses, load and strain
• Application of geotechnical instru-
mentation to real projects
• Advancement in remote monitoring
and automatic data acquisition
• Case studies related to geotechnical
instrumentation and field perfor-
mance monitoring.
For more information, please con-
tact: Malay Ghose Hajra, Assistant
Professor at The University of New
Orleans, tel. 504-280-7062, e-mail:
mghoseha@uno.edu.
Out-of-state students can take the
course online, and should contact
Malay Ghose Haria for the arrange-
ments.
Closure
Please send contributions to this
column, or an abstract of an article for
GIN, to me as an e-mail attachment in
MSWord, to john@dunnicliff.eclipse.
co.uk, or by mail: Little Leat, Whis-
selwell, Bovey Tracey, Devon TQ13
9LA, England. Tel. +44-1626-832919.
De hoje á um ano, com todos juntos
e com boa saude! – “This day next
year, with everyone together and in
good health” (Portugal – yes, I know
that I’m missing an accent in ‘saude’
– blame the symbols menu on my
computer!)
A Reusable Instrumented Test Pile for Improved Pile Design
Jason DeJong, Aravinthan Thurairajah, and Mason Ghafghazi
Abstract
Accuracy in estimating driven pile
capacity at a project site is limited
due to an inability to capture the full
complexity of the soil deposit, soil
properties, pile drivability, dynamic
soil/pile interaction, and pile setup.
These potential errors/uncertainties
are usually compensated for by using
a safety factor. Development of an in
situ testing device that replicates the
anticipated construction conditions
to the greatest extent possible and
provides data to predict pile capacity
at the design phase of a project would
result in safety and economic benefits.
This article presents an overview of a
reusable instrumented test pile (RTP)
being developed at the University of
California Davis as an in situ test-
ing device for improved pile design
in granular soils. The RTP system
consists of short instrumented sec-
tions that provide measurements of
axial load, radial stress, pore pressure
and acceleration, and are connected
in series with standard Becker pipe