Homewood Suites

As the project manager, Darius directed the geotechnical investigation and foundation recommendation for a two and three story hotel building complex underlain by soft, compressible clay (Bay Mud). Due to the cost and environmental restraints, we recommended the use of light weight fill, below the mat foundation for the purpose of minimizing total and differential settlements. Up to 5 feet of fill was excavated and replaced with foam concrete (commercially known as Elastizell) to reduce the overburden pressure and subsequently reduce the soil bearing pressure in order to limit the consolidation settlements of the Bay Mud and the fill. A finite-element-analysis using the program ANSYS was performed to model the interaction between the soil and foundation, and to evaluate the impact of liquefaction induced settlements on the Elastizell and mat foundation system. It is noteworthy to mention that, this was the first application of foam concrete as light weight fill below a major structural foundation.