IHNC – Lake Borgne Barrier GIWW to MRGO, St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, USACE-New Orleans District
IHNC – Lake Borgne Barrier GIWW to MRGO, St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, USACE-New Orleans District
New Orleans
At $1.3 billion, the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal Barrier is the U.S Army Corps of Engineers’ largest design-build project to date. The project is designed to protect some of the most vulnerable New Orleans neighborhoods from storm surges coming from the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Borgne. The work requires designing and building a storm surge barrier which includes levees, flood walls and navigation floodgate structures all using the latest USACE criteria.
Ardaman, as a subconsultant to Tetra Tech performed geotechnical analyses for the Bayou Bievenue Lift Gate, Advanced Measures for the main barrier wall and tie-in T-walls into the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW) and the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) levees. Ardaman’s engineers performed geotechnical analyses with regard to global stability, pile capacities, settlements, seepage, temporary retaining structures, etc. for the structures associated with this barrier. Specialized analyses include Plaxis, Slope W and UTexas4. All of the engineering analyses were made in accordance with the USACE Hurricane and Storm Risk Reduction System Design Guidelines (HSDRRS-DG).
Ardaman developed a system embedded in the main barrier wall that will allow for monitoring the behavior and movements of the structure under actual storm events. This will give measurements of the wall’s performance that can be compared to the predicted performance.