A project of $ 1.5 billion to double the length of the Kentucky block on the Tennessee River – an expansion project west of Kentucky 25 years in the realization – has reached a milestone with the construction and installation of the final structural monoliths that form the nucleus of the Lock.
The new block will be 110 feet by 1,200 feet, twice as much as the existing lock, which was completed in 1944. The first Monolit, part of a group of 51, finished off in October 2024. In total, the lock will have 64 monoliths.
The 100 -hectare construction site for the Kentucky Lock Addition project, a great deal of civil improvement, thrums with activity of 350 employees, Freemasons, carpenters, team operators, iron workers, engineers, managers, supervisors and experts in health and health control and quality. The Jobsite site has a plant for concrete lots, thousands of feet of a transport system of materials and manufacturing stores especially built to make elements necessary for monoliths. In combination with the continuous operation of the existing blockade, the increase in the capacity of the new structure will relieve current delays for boats with an average of 10 hours, the highest of all North -Americans, according to the United States Army Engineers Corps, which manages the project.
A carpenter installs a form of permanence, a form of expanded metal permit for the concrete poured into the place inside the blocking wall.
Photo courtesy of Thalle Construction Co.
Capacity to build
The lock is a critical infrastructure on the Tennessee River, which serves as a gateway for river traffic and provides access to the Tennessee and Cumberland river basins and the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
The boats carry approximately 30 to 40 million tonnes of commercial materials through the lock each year, the equivalent of 1.4 million 18 -wheel trucks. However, due to its limited length, the lock has become a significant bottle neck of the river system, causing an increase in trailer and other costs for companies that transport goods to the water.
The new lock is immediately next to the existing operating lock, both property and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority and located in Grand Rivers, Ky.
Working towards a period of July 2027, Thalle Construction Co., a Tully group based in Hillsborough, NC, is building and installing the remaining structural monoliths needed to complete the new lock, which body estimates will provide a financial benefit of $ 114.3 million a year.
Brian Sharp, executive of the Thalle project, says that each monolith requires about 11,000 C concrete to form the walls of the lock, which, when they are finished, will contain a complement of massive valves, bites and ports to allow the water from Lake Kentucky to flow and leave the lock room, allowing the boats to travel up and down.
The project site shown before Thalle Construction began working in the current phase of the Lock Monoliths project.
Photo courtesy of Thalle Construction Co.
“Each monolith is essentially a block of mass concrete,” says Sharp. “The monoliths are based on a prepared bottom surface and extend to the top of the lock.”
The monoliths are 50 feet in length, 110 feet high and vary with width between 75 feet at the bottom and 25 feet on top.
“Monoliths are built in 5 -foot vertical increases and require up to 23 locations to complete,” says Sharp. “These 5 -foot heights are known as elevators and represent individual concrete locations.”
“Each monolith is essentially a mass concrete block.”
—Brian Sharp, project Executive, Thalle Construction Co.
Kenneth Bowen, executive of the Thalle project, adds that “in total, the 51 monoliths needed to complete the downstream section of the lock included in our field of work require more than 1,200 concrete locations.”
In addition to the concrete, each monolith contains steel reinforcement and a series of metal elements made embedded in embedded wall armor, line hooks, floating mooring bits and interior elements such as cultivation coatings, valves and mechanical equipment needed to open and close the masses.
Thale started working on his first project related to the blockade in 2010 after an award for contract for the excavation of the site, the construction of nine monoliths upstream and the installation of the upstream miter doors. He completed his first project in 2016 and received the current work phase by 2021.
A view from the floor of the chamber shows the jump formulas used to build the monoliths, with tower plates and transporters in the background.
Photo courtesy of Thalle Construction Co.
A strong foundation
He says that one challenge is to ensure that each monolith is on stable ground.
“The construction of each monolith begins at the foundation, where the rock is exploited to a consistent elevation that is inspected and is considered competent to support the massive structure,” says Bowen.
The bases require a wide preparation that includes the cleaning of rocks, the dental excavation and the filling of imperfections with dental concrete before capturing with a concrete clay mat to complete the preparation of the foundation.
In cases where geotechnical studies of the surface have determined that the rock foundation requires additional treatment, the perforations of Thalle in the foundation rock up to 60 feet and fit the concrete steel axes to provide additional support for the structure.
Middle wall monoliths extend above and on the permanent concrete cofferdam sections and are linked along with thousands of receiving skills.
Photo courtesy of Thalle Construction Co.
Looking up
Following the preparation of the Foundation, the work proceeds vertically.
“The formwork meets to contain the concrete to adapt to two 5-foot concrete elevators,” says Brandon Johnson, responsible for the Thalle project. “Steel reinforcement is installed within each lift along with other elements of the site.”
Thalle cares aggregate, sand, fly and cement ash and mix the components in a concrete plant in the place used to produce the concrete that is placed inside the formwork to create the structure.
The production infrastructure consists of aggregate stocks that are continuously moist to maintain saturation before the incorporation into the concrete mixture. These components feed on the hopes, combined and wet screen, the screens are obtained to re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-size the weights before being fed to the mixers.
“The aggressive calendar of the project requires a specific production and place at all seasons.”
—Brandon Johnson, project manager, Thalle Construction Co.
On the floor, the aggregates are added to the mixers along with the administrators, the fly and the cement to produce batch lots. Most of the structural concrete used is a mixture of mass concrete with a maximum nominal size of 3 inches in diameter.
“The aggressive calendar of the project requires specific production and placement at all stations,” says Johnson. “The lot of lots on the site is equipped with refrigerators that cool the water up to 35 degrees, which is applied to the aggregates during the transport to the weights and is introduced to the mixture to help fulfill the 70 degrees of maximum concrete temperature during the months of warm time.”
To complement the refrigerators, Thalle installed an industrial ice plant to produce and introduce ice directly into the mixture during the heat. The plant is also equipped with boilers to provide hot water that is added to the mixture during the cold climate to maintain the concrete above the minimum temperature requirements.
“Once the concrete is dropped, it has to travel more than 1,000 feet by a series of transporters, some of which are suspended in the air by cranes of the tower to allow them to reach the destination at each monolic location,” says Bowen.
The advances seen on the walls of the Earth and on the middle side about a year and a half after the start of the project in 2021.
Photo courtesy of Thalle Construction Co.
Plan
The massive quantity of concrete needed to complete the current work phase and the limited options to manage concrete mixes containing aggregate sizes of up to 3 inches. Make concrete transport from the lot by lots to the place of placement a large logistical obstacle.
The planning of how to convey the concrete began during the development of proposals before Thalle was awarded the project. “From this stage of early planning, it was decided that there would be enough tower cranes to the site to provide a double cover of the project footprint,” says Sharp.
This resulted in the disposition of six tower cranes, three of which were appointed to support the placement transporters. “It needed a thorough consideration of the height of each crane to avoid conflicts during the operation and an additional consideration was needed to decide to place to reach all the necessary locations,” says Sharp.
The full place coverage and the ability to reach all the placement areas were achieved through permanently configured dedicated equipment. This “allowed a high level of efficiency to prevent the configuration time and the equipment to move between each placement,” says Johnson, who “is essential to obtain the 1,200 individual concrete locations in a period of four years.”
Thale also maintains and operates two manufacturing stores on the site. The formwork store produces personalized formwork items and configures the system formwork to use it in the field. The steel manufacturing store ends the assembly of prefabricated embedded metals and produces framing and anchors for use during the assembly of the structures.
“Because the work of this magnitude and scale is not common, many [employee] The positions in these stores require a significant amount of training, “says Sharp.
Stephen Butwell, responsible for the construction of Thalle, adds that the firm “worked diligently to educate workers in the right media and methods to achieve the required work.”
“Overcoming the learning curve and being able to produce the necessary work to keep in time and adhering to the strict quality standards needed to satisfy [Corps] The requirements are a success that Thalle celebrates, “he says.
Each monolith requires approximately 11,000 C of concrete to form the walls of the lock.
Photo courtesy of Thalle Construction Co.
Emphasis on security
Security is another reason for celebration. Thale has exceeded 1.5 million working hours without a lost incident.
Jeremiah Manning, resident of the body for the project. The agency “diligently progresses the final design work to facilitate the award of the remaining contracts, we are increasingly approaching the operational milestone of the new Kentucky blockade project,” he says.
