Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Canada is currently facing enormous challenges dealing with the aging of infrastructures, with 60% of our public infrastructure is more than 40 years old. This critical infrastructure is supported by different types of foundations that are of considerable economic value. Hence, there is an urgent need for novel efficient foundation technologies to support new infrastructure and to upgrade and extend the life of existing infrastructure. The main objective of the proposed research is to develop novel deep foundation systems and products that will minimize environmental impact and will save money for construction companies, and owners and operators of this infrastructure. This research program will investigate the performance of innovative foundations for a variety of infrastructure projects subjected to a variety of environmental and man-made loadings. It will involve field and experimental measurements of investigated foundation systems, which will demonstrate the feasibility and superior performance of the proposed innovative foundations and products. In addition, the experimental measurements and observations will be used in calibrating/verifying analytical and numerical models that can be used for the design and evaluation of the performance characteristics of the examined foundation technologies.The proposed research program comprises three research directions that investigate foundation systems for three different types of infrastructure. These research directions deal with construction, analysis and design issues, including different loading conditions, construction techniques and materials, and response characteristics of different foundation systems.***1. Large capacity deep foundations for highway infrastructure***Foundations for highway bridges are subjected to heavy gravitational, traffic and environmental loads, which necessitates utilizing foundation systems that have large load carrying capacity. Two innovative pile foundation solutions that provide large capacity at a reduced cost will be examined for this purpose.***2. Foundations for telecommunication and power transmission towers***Telecommunication/transmission towers and wind turbines are often constructed in remote and difficult access sites, and impose complex loading conditions on their foundations characterized by high lateral forces and bending moments.  Two innovative technologies will be investigated to enhance the lateral and bending resistances of micropiles foundation for such applications.***3. Foundations for vibrating equipment***Oil pipelines, power generation/petrochemical plants require foundations that can be installed and loaded quickly and can withstand dynamic loading. The dynamic response of two efficient foundation systems that offer advantages with regard to fast installation and ease of installation in remote and limited access sites will be examined.**