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ETTL News & Views |
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ETTL News & Views |
| Contents • I-49• Doug's Corner • Shuffler & UT Tyler • Environment • Avalon Ldfl • US-69 • Crawfish • Happy End• NTC-College • ETTL Web Site |
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I-49 Slowly Climbs |
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ETTL uses portable laboratory (left) to test construction materials used for I-49 between Fouke and Doddridge in Southwest Arkansas. At right, ETTL technician Jason Lovett puts base materials through sieve tests next to the laboratory's drying oven. |
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| As an indication of the immensity of the construction requirements of the Interstate highway system in these United States, the above mobile laboratory will be at its present site between Fouke and Doddridge, Arkansas - which are all of 14 miles apart - for at least a full year. A technician from ETTL's Texarkana, Arkansas, facility will be there throughout each working day, testing materials used for the highway's base. In addition, ETTL technicians will daily carry out on-site testing of concrete used for the highway's surface..
When you consider that these construction materials testing (CMT) services will be provided by ETTL continually for over a year for just a 14-mile stretch, and that I-49, when completed some years hence, will reach some 900 miles from New Orleans to Kansas City, the size of the over-all project staggers the mind. Once the northbound traveler reaches Kansas City, Missouri, he'll then have the choice of taking already completed I-35 up to Duluth, Minnesota, or I-29 up to the Canadian border and continuing on to Winnipeg, Manitoba, well over 1000 miles in each case. (ETTL has carried out similar services in another I-49 project location in Southwest Arkansas, below Texarkana.) As most of our readers know, I-49 has been completed from Shreveport south through Louisiana to Lafayette. Plans and work at that end are being carried out to lead it down and around to New Orleans. Meanwhile, above Shreveport the road is gradually moving north. Details of various portions of the route are still being worked out. Most likely I-49's path will follow U.S. 71 and U.S. 59 through Arkansas, tying into various other constructions planned or currently being carried out, gradually extending the road toward its Kansas City terminus. |
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ETTL was retained for this present project by Interstate Highway Construction, Inc., of Englewood, Colorado. Our resposibilities include (1) taking densities of the highway's underlying layer of soil (select fill); (2) carrying out sieve tests, in the portable laboratory, of the base material installed atop the soil - a gray crushed rock (at right, ETTL's Jason Lovett gathers a sample quantity of newly installed base for testing). (3) After the rock is rolled out, densities are taken of it as well. Then, after a 4" matte of open grade asphalt has been applied (which we don't test), (4) we thoroughly test concrete, applied as the highway's upper surface, for air and slump, taking sample cylinders for subsequent compression testing at ETTL's Texarkana laboratories. |
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| We accompanied Jason Lovett recently to take photos of concrete being placed for approach slabs at the south end of a largely completed double bridge across the Sulphur River (photo at left shows the west side of the bridge). Forms for concrete for an approach slab are in the foreground of the second photo. Shortly after we arrived, the first of a steady series of Smith's Ready Mix, Inc., trucks arrived from Texarkana, and began placing concrete in similar forms at the end of the east side of the bridge. In the right-hand photo a workman is using a vibratory "wand" to settle the concrete. It also, he told us, breaks up bubbles in the mix. "It's real powerful."
In the photos below, Jason Lovett gets a sample barrow load of newly arrived concrete (left) and proceeds to take required air and slump tests, as well as to prepare test cylinders which will set overnight and then be transported to ETTL Texarkana for curing and compression testing.. Such CMT activities, as described above in this brief summary, are scheduled to be carried out every work day, as project needs and State requirements dictate, with findings carefully recorded and delivered. |
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| For more information about ETTL's CMT services, see our web site's CMT (or CME) section, or contact Mark Miller, C.T.E., who manages ETTL's Tyler and Longview CMT field operations, or Donny Rhea, manager of ETTL's office-laboratory in Texarkana, Arkansas. |
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News & Views |
ETTL Engineers & Consultants Inc. 1717 East Erwin, Tyler, TX 75702 903-595-4421 • FAX 903-595-6113 E-Mail: ettlinc@ettlinc.com |
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