Friedetal Bridge, Germany

The new Göttingen to Halle autobahn BAB A38 will alleviate the heavy traffic flow on the B80 in Germany. A new viaduct is required where the route crosses Peace Valley (Friedetal) near Sollstedt in the state of Thüringen. The ground conditions at the site required a unique solution for pile testing and subsequent pile design.
Washout of the Gypsum layers at around 26m is already evident in the middle of the valley. At the location of the piers, some gypsum still exists and the concern about its long term behaviour, local mining subsidence and consequential settlement of the upper soils necessitated a means for minimising the negative skin friction which may result in the working piles. The piled foundations would therefore be required to found in the lower stable soil layers and have a skin friction reducing mechanism to assure the 120 year design life required.
Multi O-cell arrangement Friedetal
Multilevel bi-directional testing at two O-cell levels was performed. The upper arrangement designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the friction reducing mechanism and the lower level was placed just above the toe to determine skin friction and end bearing.

Combined vertical and lateral test Germany

The compression test was followed by a lateral load test to 600kN. Despite the complexity of the pile instrumentation and test configuration, the testing proved to be a great success with all phases of the testing completed satisfactorily.

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Friedetal Bridge, Germany