Automated simple tell-tale device for detecting loss of backfill soil through joints of quays
Automated simple tell-tale device for detecting loss of backfill soil through joints of quays
Unlike most hydraulic structures, quays withstand high, bidirectional, and highly changing gradients. Thus, since discontinuities (joints in the former and gaps in the latter) are unavoidable when quays are engineered as concrete diaphragm walls or alignments of caissons, the backfilling soil in their vicinity is likely to be flushed out due to poor conditions of the joints at the wall face or of the sealing grout at the gaps. Soil loss may progress backward, causing eventually sinkholes on the yard pavement near the capping beam. The presence of unmapped growing cavities or chimneys beneath the pavement is even more hazardous for operating vehicles. The Laboratory for Geotechnics (Laboratoria de Geotecnia) (LG) at CEDEX devised the so-called sand tell-tales: they consist of vertical short pipes (~ 1m long) refillable with clean medium-size sand, located halfway in potential erosion pathways, which initiate start near discontinuities. This new device allows for measurement of the loss of soil produced by previous inspection, in view of detecting incipient cavities. The combined analysis of all of them along the quay alignment leads to an overall assessment of the infrastructure. The purpose of this publication is to review the most important points of this elementary and innovative monitoring system.
C. Laina-Gomez; E. Asanza-Izquierdo
28th European Young Geotechnical Engineers Conference (EYGEC2024)
Keynote Papers
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