Students: Dustin Broek, Jarrod Nelson, Chad Ringler, Timothy Saner, Kyle Tee
Faculty Advisor or Community Project Lead: Osama A. Abaza
Client Organization: Municipality of Anchorage Anchorage Water & Wastewater Utility
Summary:
The Alaska Railroad Corporation’s (ARRC) fueling and maintenance yard is located near the port of Anchorage, in the northwest section of the city. The yard has approximately 2000 linear feet of aging 10 inch cast iron water pipe that is need of repair or placement. The pipe was originally placed in the 1940’s, and due to it longs service life, as well as corrosion, has been prone to shear breaks which has closed sections of its service loop. Construction and maintenance restraints within the yard posed one of the greatest challenges to the project, so modern techniques such as trenchless drilling would have to be incorporated. The pipe is crucial to the fire protection of the yard, as well as the surrounding buildings, and immediate action is needed to remediate the problem.
Anchorage Water Wastewater Utility (AWWU) and ARRC teamed up with the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) Civil Engineering Department to task the Senior Design class to propose a repair or replacement design of the pipe system in the rail yard. Deliverables would include lists of alternatives, criteria and methodology used to evaluate each alternative, and a final design study report (DSR) that would recommend and give a cost estimate of the chosen alternative. Four technical teams would handle design of the overall project, covering such aspects as hydrology and geotechnical considerations. Mentoring the team were professional engineers from AWWU, and DOWL HKM. These mentors not only provided guidance on the project, but helped the team focus on alternatives and techniques that were the most current and relative to the job tasked.
The final design proposed by the senior design team included staying with a 10 inch diameter pipe, which met fire flow requirements, but moving the pipe placement away from the current alignment which ran under long sections of railroad track, and in between buildings. While significantly longer and costlier than standard remediation of the existing pipe and alignment, it was felt that the UAA senior design team’s proposed alternative could alleviate current problems, as well as meet the seventy year service life requirement.
The collaboration between AWWU, the ARRC, and UAA allowed the senior design team to learn from professional engineers practicing current techniques that were being utilized in our proposed design. This gave our team ideas and design options that we may not have been aware of prior to working on the given project.
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