Case History
Ground Improvement in Port of Brisbane (PoB) Clay
Jay Ameratunga, Cynthia De Bok
Coffey Geotechnics, Brisbane, Australia
Peter Boyle
Port of Brisbane Corporation, Fisherman Islands, Brisbane, Australia
Daniel Berthier
Menard Bachy, Sydney, Australia
The Port of Brisbane (PoB), located at the mouth of the Brisbane River at Fisherman Islands, is undertaking a reclamation expansion of a 235ha sub-tidal area using maintenance dredged materials from the adjacent river. The reclaimed site is underlain by soft dredged materials up to 9m thickness as well as soft to firm Holocene clays in the natural sea bed as deep as 30m. Extensive ground improvement is required for such deposits prior to releasing the land for development. A well planned set of ground improvement trials involving international operators were conducted to optimise and select suitable techniques prior to rolling out. The project won the Innovation Award in 2009 from the Institution of Engineers Queensland Division in Australia. This paper describes the project, characteristics of the PoB clay, the reasons for deciding on trials and a discussion of some results from the trials.
Port of Brisbane
Port of Brisbane (PoB) is the main container port of the State of Queensland on the east coast of Australia (Figure 1). It is located in the lower reaches of the Brisbane River on reclaimed land at the mouth of the river. The land reclamation had been in progress since the early 1980’s and the current Port footprint, now called Fisherman Islands, is almost entirely constructed in the adjacent Moreton Bay. Figure 2 shows the history of reclamation in Fisherman Islands and the gradual reclamation and development towards the northeast since 1958.
Figure 1: Site location (Courtesy of Port of Brisbane Corporation)
Download ISSMGE Bulletin – Volume 4 Issue 2 (pp. 28-54)
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