The formal opening of the new Queen's University School of Medicine took place to great fanfare in September 2011. Sixteen months earlier, crews were putting the finishing touches on 74 high capacity rock anchors designed and constructed by Geo-Foundations.
The building features 4 floors plus a mechanical penthouse above grade and two levels of basement below grade. Rock anchors were required for this project to meet the seismic resistance requirements of the National Building Code of Canada (2005) for buildings of this type in the geographical region that includes Kingston, ON.
Most of the anchors were developed into the structure by projecting upwards into the basement shear walls as much as 8 metres, but due to limits in the shape and height of some of the basement walls, some were terminated within footings with plate anchorages. The highest loaded anchors were designed for 2650 kN (factored) tension. Although embedment depth for pull out resistance governed the rock anchor geotechnical design basis in most cases, high capacity test anchors were loaded to verify adhesion prior to production rock anchor construction. Rock anchors at this site consist of fully bonded, solid bar, 517 MPa tendons encapsulated in 30 MPa grout in 178 mm drilled holes as deep as 20 m below the underside of structure.
Construction manager of this $77 million project was M. Sullivan & Son Ltd. And the owner's structural consultant was Roney Engineering Limited. Pre-production testing commenced in February 2010 and rock anchor construction was completed 6 weeks later.
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