Projects

St Marys Cement Plant Upgrade

Charlevoix, MI

Gosling Czubak was retained by St. Marys Cement and its parent company, Votorantim Cimentos, to implement the use of soil-cement ground improvement innovative solution to support a 225-foot tall blend silo at their Charlevoix, Michigan cement plant. 

We performed mix-design trial batches in our construction materials laboratory and provided a mix design to meet the design parameters.  During construction Gosling Czubak engineers and certified technicians performed on-site observation and field testing of mixing, placing, and compaction of the soil-cement, which allowed subgrade soil bearing pressures to be increased from 3,000 to 8,000 pounds per square foot (psf). Our field and laboratory testing during construction established that even the lowest strength test results achieved more than twice the minimum strength specified. Soil-cement was also used beneath several other structures for a total of over 30,000 square feet at the plant, each requiring significant bearing capacity.  Gosling Czubak also provided topographic and construction staking surveys for the project.

The blend silo was constructed using a slip form process, a 24-hour operation that ran continuously for two weeks with an average upward travel rate of one inch every 7 minutes, and a concrete placement rate of 20 yards per hour, dependent on the steel requirements, embed items and torsional movement. Field Inspection and testing of concrete and steel being placed was required, including continuous monitoring of the slump and other mix characteristics to provide the desired specification compliance. Laboratory testing of concrete compressive strength was performed to verify placed concrete met or exceeded design specifications. 

The base of the silo, 106 feet in diameter, is composed of 1,400 cubic yards of concrete. The total structure placement was more than 3,500 cubic yards.