Pile Cap Essay

The connections of the fascia boards to the pile caps were severely overstressed during the hurricane. Most of these connections in the entire pavilion area experienced failure of the wood, usually resulting in splitting of the wood (see Figure 8). Further inspection revealed that shimming was used heavily during the construction of the pier to maintain a flat deck surface. This raised the fascia boards up and greatly decreased strength of the connection to resist uplift. These geometric conditions, in addition to the reliance on the fascia board to resist the uplift forces at the exterior stringers, are definitely at fault for the wide spread failures.

The design of the deck relied on the connection of the fascia to the pile cap to transfer the stringer loads into the pile cap along the borders of the platform areas (pavilion, concessions, and bathrooms). This condition differs from those stringers that are located where both ends are interior (ie not ending into a fascia board), where the means of transferring the load into the pile cap is at the ends of the stringers. Thus, …show more content…
Previously, it was mentioned that this area experienced heavy hurricane induced wave loading, causing failure of the west handrail. During the assessment, a large piece of the broken fascia board (approximately 4 inch in thickness) from Bent 69 was found logged under the fascia board near the southwest corner of the pavilion area (see Figure 9). The location of the logged wood is approximately 14ft back from the end of the pier, where it likely broke away during a wave. It is suspected that the same wave had enough force to bust another fascia board connection downstream, lift the entire deck in this area several inches, and then wedge this broken piece of wood under the undamaged fascia board at this location. The amount force required to achieve this is on the order several tons of