Archon has designed several foundations for industrial structures.
This project was the design of a foundation for a cylinder receipt and dispatch building at a nuclear fuel enrichment facility. The building was large, 122000 sf. The challenge with this design was that adjacent buildings were already constructed, with little room to extend the foundation past the building foot print. Our solution was to design massive saw-tooth footings that would serve as counter weights to resist the high wind loading. Each of the approximately 60 saw-tooth extensions was 5’ thick, 8’ wide and 20’ long. Because of the high moments generated by the counter weight action, the footings were heavily reinforced.
After construction, due to changes in the regulatory requirements, the building was re-classified as safety related. Because of this, additional seismic loading was applied to the building. Seismic forces would generate moments that were in excess of the original foundation design. We solved this problem by designing several micro-piles that would be used to strengthen the foundations ability to resist up-lift. Some of these piles were required to resist a 100,000 lb test load and were set 40’ into the sandy type soil. Final testing of the piles showed that our design and calculations were accurate and the piles would perform their intended function.
