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 1992 NOVA Award Winners |
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BauMesh Confinement Reinforcement The NOVA Award was presented to BauMesh Confinement Reinforcement for innovation in fabricating reinforcing steel, particularly for heavily reinforced concrete shear walls and columns. Steel reinforcing cages are critical for supporting poured-in-place concrete walls and columns, particularly in earthquake regions. These cages prevent vertical bars from buckling and bursting their concrete shell. They also help align and support vertical reinforcing during concrete placement. In conventional concrete construction, the ties that hold reinforcing cages are made from reinforcing bars cut to length and bent into rectangles. These formed ties are costly to fabricate, time consuming to install, and sometimes inadequate in fulfilling their purpose. In 1987, Hanns U. Baumann, president of Baumann Research and Development Corporation, developed BauMesh Confinement Reinforcement. BauMesh uses automatic welding of high-strength, cold-drawn wire to replace conventional reinforcing ties. The wire is cut and placed in jigs where it is fuse-welded at the intersections. BauMesh streamlines reinforcing steel erection by eliminating manual tying of stirrups. It more accurately aligns and supports primary steel reinforcing, while increasing the space for concrete placement. This improves concrete quality and reduces the effects of vibration, factors that are especially important in seismic areas. BauMesh also reduces costs. Because hooks and extensions are not used, less steel is needed than in conventional tie systems. The labor required to bend ties and stirrups is also reduced. And it takes less time to install BauMesh reinforcing cages in the field. BauMesh was used in the San Francisco State University dormitory, a 17-story concrete shear wall structure located less than two miles from the San Andreas fault line. When the building was 90% complete, it withstood the Loma Prieta earthquake whose epicenter was only a few miles away. Primarily Responsible: Hanns U. Baumann Contact: Hanns U. Baumann Baumann Research & Development Corporation 567 San Nicolas Dr. Ste. 104 Newport Beach, CA 92660 Phone: 714-640-2880 |
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Code Red Stack Fitting The NOVA Award was presented to the Code Red Stack Fitting for innovation in stopping the spread of fire through plastic pipe penetrations in fire-rated floors. Plumbing waste lines and stacks made of PVC are highly combustible. In a multi-story structure, they often become chimney-like conduits for carrying fire from floor to floor. In 1983, Kenneth Cornwall, president of ProSet Systems, invented the Code Red Stack Fitting to prevent the spread of fire and smoke through stacks of PVC pipes. They are temperature-activated, gravity-powered mechanical seals that close off the upper length of a stack at the floor slab. Designed to be installed easily with conventional plumbing tools, the Code Red Stack Fitting is suitable for concrete-floor and wood-framed construction, for multi-story commercial buildings and residential buildings. It has been fire tested in accordance with ASTM standard E-814 and is classified by Underwriters Laboratories Inc. Code Red Stack Fittings are y-shaped. A cast-iron plug is held inside the "y" branch of the fitting by a temperature-sensitive polyethylene harness. When the temperature inside the pipe reaches 250 degrees Fahrenheit, the harness melts and releases the plug. The plug drops into a cast-iron lining pipe in the bottom of the fitting. Code Red Stack Fittings proved their value in 1988, when a multi-story building, in which the fittings were installed, was set on fire. An arsonist set fire to construction materials stored in a lower-level garage. All of the Code Red Stack Fittings performed as expected, preventing the fire from entering the floors above. After just two hours, the blaze was extinguished. The Code Red Stack Fitting has been installed in a number of buildings including several hotels at Disneyworld-including the Swan, Dolphin, Grand Floridian, and Marriott. Primarily Responsible: Kenneth R. Cornwall Contact: Kenneth R. Cornwall ProSet Systems Inc. 1355 Capital Circle Lawrenceville, GA 30243-5866 Phone: 404-339-1782 |
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Ekofisk Tank Protective Barrier The NOVA Award was presented to the Ekofisk Tank Protective Barrier for innovation in offshore construction. In 1984, the Phillips Petroleum Company discovered that platforms and collecting tanks in its largest North Sea oil field Ekofisk had sunk 20 feet into the sea bed. To protect the field's central storage tank, Phillips engineers designed a massive sea wall: a circular concrete structure more than 460 feet in diameter and 350 feet hi gh to be constructed in just one short summer. The lower footprint of the barrier was cast in dry-dock in two halves, near Rotterdam, Holland. Once floated out of dry-dock, a submersible lift ship transported each half to a second staging area in Alfjord, Norway, close to the sea wall's installation site. Weighing 27,000 tons apiece, the semicircular components are the greatest dry-weight shipments of single objects ever made. In Alfjord, the remainder of the barrier was constructed of slip-formed and precast concrete. More than 6,000 metric tons of high-strength steel were used for vertical prestressing the largest single application to date. The two halves of the sea barrier were then towed into position around the tank and joined. Gravel ballast was added to lower the barrier to the sea floor. The completed barrier contains 100,000 cubic meters of concrete and 24,000 metric tons of rebar. Installed weight of the complete barrier and gravel ballast is more than 900,000 metric tons. The construction challenges of this project, a barrier built to protect a Phillips Petroleum storage tank in the North Sea, arise from its sheer size (one of the largest objects ever transported) and the need to complete all work in a single short construction season. Primarily Responsible: Madison Wiley Barron; John C. Mihm; Jack P. Perryman Contact: Madison Wiley Barron Phillips Petroleum Company Phillips Building, 9th Floor Bartlesville, OK 74004 Phone: 918-661-6600 |
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Palisades Steam Generator Replacement Project The NOVA Award was presented to the Palisades Steam Generator Replacement Project for innovation in replacing steam generators in an operational nuclear power plant. When steam generators required replacement at the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Covert, Michigan, Consumers Power Company needed to find an innovative way to manage the mammoth project. The usual procedure for replacing steam generators in nuclear reactors is to cut them apart and remove them through an equipment hatch. At Palisades, however, the hatch was unusually small and the generators were especially large-20 feet wide, 60 feet long, and more than 450 tons. Consumers Power teamed with Bechtel Construction Company to devise a new solution for replacing generators. Each generator at Palisades was removed as a single unit through a 20' x 26' hole created in the reactor wall. Approved by the NRC, this was the first breech of an operational nuclear plant's post-tensioned, pre-stressed containment structure in the United States. The opening in the reactor wall was created with a unique combination of cutting techniques that included the use of chipping instruments, circular saws, coring tools, and diamond wire saws. Narrow groove welding performed by remote-controlled, video-monitored welding machines was used for in-situ fabrication of heavy-wall pipe for the new steam generators. This was the first time in the United States that narrow groove welding was used on carbon steel pipe with internal stainless steel lining. The Palisades project also featured the first domestic use of an optical templating system to identify and control cutting and machining locations on the generators. Precision measurement and cutting techniques were critical to creating this opening in the heavily-reinforced containment structure. The 450-ton steam generators were then carefully extracted through the opening, which was later restored. Primarily Responsible: Martin Charney; William Clark Contact: Martin Charney Bechtel Mail Stop: 03-2X-03 One South Station Boston, MA 02110 Phone: 617-342-1217 |
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