PRINCES HIGHWAY UPGRADE
Berry, NSW
Rotary Piles
Project Description
The Foxground and Berry bypass will provide a four-lane divided highway (two lanes in each direction) with median separation for 12.5 kilometres of the Princes Highway between Toolijooa Road and just south of Andersons Lane. The project will improve road safety on the Princes Highway and local road network by reducing total crashes in the project area by an estimated 64 per cent and through less interaction between traffic and pedestrians in the town of Berry.
Solutions
The bridges were sequenced to fit in with the main contractors program using two BAUER BG rotary drilling rigs to install BAUER segmental liners or single length liners depending on the pile diameter. Regular heavy duty drilling tools were used to drill through the material aside from rock material, including cobbles and boulders. Once into the rock socket, core barrels, progressive augers and centreless augers were used to drill the very high strength siltstones and lattite rock. Different methods including pilot holes and different sequences with the specialist tools were experimented with during production to find the optimal tooth configurations and technique taking into account the time it took to drill in each configuration, how hard the rig was working to achieve the observed drill rate and the wear and tear on the equipment.
Industry
Bridge
Client
(RMS) Roads and Maritime Services
Date
March 2015 - February 2016
Engineer
SMEC and Parsons Brinckerhoff
