Quote:
Originally Posted by digitallagasse
I say this with no knowledge as to the engineering involved for this. Wouldn't it have been better to anchor the building to bedrock? If a building was anchored to bedrock that should stop a building from sinking or rising. Dirt isn't that solid and even more so with earthquakes in play. Like Millennium Tower this feels like a cost savings design.
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Well I'm not an engineer either but the article specifically says that the engineer who was describing the situation said, "No". What they did was a more effective method and it makes sense to me. Piles going TO bedrock are just that--they go to it but aren't ATTACHED to it. In the case of Oceanwide Center, for example, they drilled 60+ ft holes into the bedrock and poured concrete, with reinforcing rod, into those holes and into caissons to the surface creating a piling plugged into the rock, but it isn't actually attached to the rock and there's nothing, really, to keep the pilings from pulling out of the holes in the rock if the structure to which they are attached were floating.
As to what they did, I am thinking of a giant version of the sort of mushroom anchor ships, with which I am familiar (after 26 years in the Navy), use on a very muddy bottom:
https://www.firstchoicemarine.com/g-1-anchor-guide.aspx
These can hold very effectively and especially the version without the holes in it that the one shown has can use suction to keep it from moving upward once it sinks into the mud.