Hello from Oz

[woofar]

Hi to all and a Big thank you to BigH for inviting me to this forum.

I'm very glad you did invite me because we seemed to get off on the wrong foot. It felt like we were locking horns on a couple of issues which has never been my intention. I'm relatively new to newsgroups and forums, a tremendous resource that I wish I had found years ago. My Excel skills alone have gone from just adequate to pretty competent in a very short time.

A little bit about me. I'm a materials laboratory manager for a government roads department in Australia. A major part of my duties is to work as a consultant to our engineering and design teams on construction materials matters as well as obviously running of the laboratory. Our work revolves around roads, bridges and culverts.

I'm looking forward to the generous sharing of professional knowledge that is very evident all over these Eng-Tips forums.

A very merry christmas to one and all!!

Cheers
Michael


P.S. BigH, the fact that it was a Golders lab, definitely adds credibility to the the results, unfortunately, it doesn't totally resolve my scepticism. I sure would like to get my hands on some of that material but Australia's quarantine laws guarantee that, that will only happen, if I travel to Indonesia some time.

 

[PEinc]

Welcome, woofar. I look forward to your patricipation.

Happy Holidays!

 

[BigH]

Michael - very much welcome. It is good to get someone from OZ in the group. We've a lot of Kiwis and Aussies here and the Wet Monyet if full when they are locking horns in rugby!

Don't think we got off on the wrong foot at all. I just reported what they came up with. They seem to be pretty competent in Jakarta although one of their senior people just left to open his own firm in Jakarta.

You'll find that our group - we need more participation guys!! - a wide mix of good engineers. I've been able to meet up with some and have had good conversations - on the site, off site and over the phone - with others. Look at one of the other threads - you'll see a road that we are working on!.

Cheers,
BigH (Howard - or Howie)

 

[vulcanhammer]

Welcome to the forum.

As a wave equation for piling aficionado, I note that it was the Australian David Victor Isaacs which first identified the propagation of stress waves in piling during driving back in 1931. Oz has contributed much to the science (or is it art on occasion) since.

http://www.pz27.net

 

[woofar]

Hi Vulcanhammer,

Another Australian to make a large contribution to the game was A. J. Scala who developed the Dynamic Cone Penetrometer (DCP) back in 1956. I'm not quite sure if this should be seen as a great contribution or not.

On the one hand, it is a tremendous tool when used by very experienced and knowledgeable practitioners to make assessments of the sub-strata profile and strength.

On the other hand it is very dangerous when inexperienced engineers (and even sometimes experienced ones) get a hold of some DCP results, compare them to a dodgy table, and come up with some very wild predictions about the underlying material.

Some years ago I started to write a paper called "The Use and Abuse of the Dynamic Cone Penetrometer", I had to abort the attempt because I kept railing off into vitriolic rants about the shocking abuse of the results that I have seen.

I guess as I get older I will be able to write it up correctly, however, that day hasn't come yet. I still tend to give people an earful when I see it being abused. <biggrin>

Cheers
Michael

 

[vulcanhammer]

Unfortunately the wave equation--and its field applications, PDA, CAPWAP and the like--are subject to the same kind of mindless application.

I saw one state DOT break a contractor because they did not take into consideration that, with large (54") piles, PDA results tend to become more conservative. They required the contractor to simply beat on the piles ad infinitum (and ad nauseam, I might add.)

In his original paper, Isaacs made a comment about the "factor of ignorance" which still applies today. You can see this at

http://www.vulcanhammer.info/drivability/developm.php

http://www.pz27.net