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Articles
May Technical Speaker 1
Geopier® Ground Improvement for Foundation Support
Today's building sites often present challenges in the form of variable and complex soil conditions. In Houston, these conditions include marginal soils or undocumented fill materials. Traditional solutions to the problems of low bearing capacity soils and excessive settlement, includingmassive over-excavation and replacement, or use of deep foundation elements (such as driven piles, drilled shafts, or auger cast-in-place piles) can be costly and time-consuming.
Geopier Foundation Company, Inc. (GFC), a subsidiary of the Tensar Corporation, provides engineered ground improvement solutions to meet these challenges. GFC’s patented Rammed Aggregate Pier® (RAP) elements can be used to reinforce marginal to poor soils, including soft clays and silts, loose sands, organic silt and peat, and variable fills, under any groundwater condition. RAP elements provide fast and economical soil reinforcement solutions for foundation support for commercial, industrial, municipal, and residential structures (including buildings up to 20 stories tall).
Richard Whitt, PE is GFC’s Region Engineer for Louisiana and Texas. A graduate of the University of Illinois with a master’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas, he had over 10 years’ experience in geotechnical consulting in Chicago, Waco, and Dallas prior to joining Geopier. Mr. Whitt will provide an introduction to the Geopier system, including installation methods, research findings on the results of installation, Geopier’s design process for footing support, and case histories of completed projects.
