ITD Cem lays significant emphasis on improvements in methods and processes in its areas of construction and operation. The R&D activities of ITD Cem enjoy recognition by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Government of India.
| Development of an automatic, electronic recorder system to monitor and record depth and pressure variations with time on a vibroflotation rig. |
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| Development of Polymer Slurry - This polymer based slurry, developed indigenously, possess superior properties compared to the traditional bentonite based slurry and is considered eco-friendly. |
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| Concrete Sampler - A crane mounted sampler is developed to collect concrete samples from freshly cast piles simultaneously from five collection points spaced at 500mm on centre. This feature hitherto was not possible in the past. This device assists identification of depth of contaminated concrete, and to assess the permitted built-up of concrete for piles with deep cut-off levels. |
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| Guide Casing - A mechanism is developed for driving and extracting long casings upto 12m length. Long casings could not be used on temporary basis in the past, as they were difficult to extract. The Guide casing device has collar housing unit, a rotating bar that can be attached to the Kelly of rotary piling rig. These units result in a locking arrangement that can drive or extract long casings into and out of the ground by spinning action. A flushed joint arrangement has also been devised to connect two casings, which ensured minimum disturbance to the ground during their movement. |
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| Dynamic Hammer - Motivation for developing Dynamic Hammer was generated from growing popularity of dynamic pile load tests as an alternative to static load tests in a fast track construction scenario. With increasing pile capacities, a need was felt to develop a hammer to cater for 600T to 1000T test load range. This meant that the hammer weight had to be adjustable and with a maximum drop weight of 10T. An innovative dynamic hammer was developed in-house which has a guide frame to minimize energy losses and is designed to cause spontaneous release using four simultaneously operated jacks. |
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| Modified Drill - In a project involving curtain grout holes through drainage gallery of a dam, drilling operations was required using a suitable top hammer drill with 60m drilling length in both upward and downward directions. For a small gallery size at the site, no suitable drill was available in the market. A drill rig was developed in-house; requiring only 2m head room which could successfully drill holes upto 70m. This arrangement, apart from being successful in a confined area also proved to be cost saving. |
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| Reducing Fuel Consumption during Pile Driving - Cased Drop Weight (CDW) Hammer has been developed to facilitate pile driving. One of the key advantages is that, being mechanically lifted, it replaces the compressor requirement, which is inherent component of driving with pneumatic hammers. Diesel saving by deploying CDW hammer is to the tune of 8 litres per pile of 450mm diameter and 15m length, which works out to be 3.35 litres per m3 volume of the pile. |
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| Improving Precast Pile Drivability by Water Jetting - A certain minimum depth of pile foundation is necessary in seismic areas to ensure fixity requirements. At one of our construction sites comprising dense sandy ground conditions, minimum depth of 15m was desired for precast piles to fulfill seismic design criteria. Conventional hammer driving could not achieve desired penetration. Innovative exercise was carried out at the site wherein pile penetration into dense sand was achieved upto a depth of 8m by cutting action provided by water jets emanating at the pile tip, which was followed by pile driving by pneumatic hammer. |
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| Studies on End Bearing Mobilization during Pile Driving - Studies were carried out for quantifying the contribution of end bearing resistance during pile driving. In this investigation, modeled on two closed end steel casings, bottom portions were instrumented with strain transducers and accelerometers with resistance monitoring was carried out along 4 to 16m depth. Investigations indicated that more than 90% of contribution of the pile capacity emanated from end bearing. These findings facilitated better understanding of end bearing mobilization during pile driving, and are expected to further refine the design approach of driven piles. |
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| Open End Casing Driving Options in Granular Soils - This study derived motivation from establishing a better bored piling option in areas of sandy sub-surface strata with artesian/ shallow ground water table conditions. Successful trials included spin driving by indigenously developed Guide Casing; and casing driving by Vibro/ Static hammer. Driving and extraction of casings were successfully achieved in a depth range of 14 to 20m. Findings of this study paves way for bored piling in sandy soils with full casing driving, where borehole stability is problematic. |
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| Trenching Solution in Bouldary Strata - Exhaustive studies were undertaken during 2007-08, to overcome trenching problems in cobbly-bouldery sub-surface strata. In these studies, the scheme employed peripheral row of drilled and grouted piles, and trenching the enclosed area thus forming a cut-off panel. The methodology and findings of these studies are being successfully used in the construction of cut-off trench system at Tapovan-Vishnugarh project site located at the lap of Himalayas at Uttarkhand. This scheme provided a very economical and indigenously developed substitute for trenching solution in bouldery strata which had, so far in the past, relied entirely on the costly imported technology. |
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| Pre-bored Driven Pre-cast Piling - An exercise to execute pre-cast driven piles by pre-boring technique with further penetration by hammer driving was undertaken during early 2009. The idea was to overcome a dense gravelly layer, 3m thick, located at a depth ranging from 4 to 8m below the existing ground. This layer, in all previous conventional attempts, denied penetration of all forms of driven piles. Outcome of this R & D exercise successfully saw execution of more than 2000 driven pre-cast piles in an otherwise considered formidable driving conditions. |
