Method Used to Salvage Warehouse Subjected to Severe Settlement

Abstract

A section of Newark Bay was filled in during the early 1960s as part of a large expansion of port facilities for the Port of New York. The filled areas were preloaded and subsequently used as building sites. While preloading was generally successful, one of the buildings has sustained unanticipated settlements as great as 0.6 m (2 ft). The subject building is a single-story, steel structure, 195 m (640 ft) long and 48.8 m (160 ft) wide, used for warehousing. Building columns for this structure are supported on spread footings. By the late 1980s, visible deformation of many of the building columns became a matter of general concern. The question arose as to whether rehabilitation could be accomplished at a cost that would be justified by current rentals for warehousing. The structure was first transformed from a portal system to a shear wall system. Then the building columns were analyzed in a novel manner. This analysis resulted in minimal alterations to the columns, consisting largely of stress relief, w...