BUILDING PAD FOR STEEL MILL
An Engineering Excellence Award-Winning Project

S&ME provided extensive construction materials inspection and testing services and geotechnical engineering for a new SMI Steel rolling mill facility at a site with very poor foundation conditions at Cayce, South Carolina.

A particular responsibility was to make field recommendations for undercutting and stabilization of an old mill-scale pond lying within the area of the new roll shop building. The area was filled with slag and slag/soil mix a quarter-century ago, and the 30,000 cubic yards of accumulated sediment or muck -- described as having the texture and consistency of toothpaste -- posed grave difficulties in foundation construction. 

An initial proposed was to support the floor slab on driven piles, framing the freestanding slab to span the piles. Recognizing the high costs of this approach, S&ME recommended removal of sediments and their replacement with high-quality compacted fill. Typically, such removal would require use of a large dragline to cast the muck onto temporary pads for drying before hauling off site. Again, the cost would be high. S&ME engineers elected to remove as much of the muck as possible by mud-waving; that is, lateral displacement of the sediments away from the roll shop area.

The mud waving began with a tracked dozer pushing the first lift of about six feet of clean fill down into the accumulated sediments at one edge of the pond. As the dozer pushed fill out and down, trucks dumped new fill adjacently and worked it in behind the six-foot heap to form the working surface for subsequent lifts. The operation then continued over a wide front, pushing the nearly liquid sediments eastward while carefully avoiding leaving pockets of the material behind. Displaced muck was heaped within a low berm at the other end allowing excess water to drain.

The operation was complicated by several factors requiring S&ME to make numerous field judgments to avoid excessive rework. Our engineers worked closely with SMI's engineering department in developing and implementing a foundation solution that saved an estimated $600,000 to $900,000. The project is a useful demonstration of methods to lower the costs of developing existing industrial sites for new use.

"We would like to express our sincere gratitude for your efforts on construction of our new mill."

—Project Engineer
SMI Steel-South Carolina