BDSLT Knowledge Base
The purpose of this site is to share knowledge about BDSLT and to answer questions.
Bi-directional testing has been around 35 years. In that time a lot has been learned. A lot has been learned about foundation construction as well. We invite contractors to share with us anything useful they learned about using BDSLT or about the methods that increase the odds of success.
With some of us getting over 30 years of experience in this industry, there are stories and lessons learned. In the 90's most contractors were nervous about BDSLT. Having an engineer specify the test was never great news.
But a few stepped forward realizing the challenge was good for them and the deep foundation industry. Some also knew greater quality was important and this testing would help. They were right.
With cooperation and essential help from major Engineers, General Contractors and Drilled Shaft Contractors, the first BDSLT providers pioneered the fledgling sub-industry. The power of BDSLT was at first the ability to test full scale foundation elements such as drilled shafts. Until then, the engineer would design as good as he or she could but larger and larger units were being designed and installed. Often healthy guesses were made having nothing but theory and much smaller scale tests.
With cooperation and essential help from major Engineers, General Contractors and Drilled Shaft Contractors, the first BDSLT providers pioneered the fledgling sub-industry. The power of BDSLT was at first the ability to test full scale foundation elements such as drilled shafts. Until then, the engineer would design as good as he or she could but larger and larger units were being designed and installed. Often healthy guesses were made having nothing but theory and much smaller scale tests.
In time, the tests revealed loads closer to predictions even on very large foundations. The industry improved. Then the testing became more practical on smaller and smaller elements as small as 12 inches and 100 tons.
This is a beginning.
We hope to expand this to a blog-type web site. But to start we invite friends to contribute anything useful or interesting by email.
Please be patient as we build up the site and add more ourselves. We will add more as news or important information comes our way.