Connecting Pittsburgh to its southern hills, the Liberty Tunnels serve as one of the major arteries to the city, eliminating the need to travel over or around Mt. Washington. Before the tunnels, traveling around the mountain made commuting between the south suburbs and the city a long, impractical and dangerous drive.
After 85 years of heavy traffic and wear and tear, the pair of 5,899-ft-long, two-lane tunnels were in dire need of structural repairs and restoration. The rehabilitation was necessary to keep this connecting throughway open for the more than 63,000 commuters who depend on the subterranean roadway every day.
PennDOT, which oversees the tunnels, turned to Pittsburgh-based Mosites Construction Co., a company with a key focus in specialized concrete structures.
Mosites opted to use QUIKRETE Shotcrete MS - AR Fiberglass Reinforced, a single-component dry process shotcreting material containing micro silica. The material provides high compressive strength, improved sulphate resistance, high adhesion, low permeability, low rebound and low sag.
To meet additional performance requirements, alkali-resistant fiberglass fibers were added to control shrinkage cracking, and a migrating corrosion inhibitor was added for corrosion protection of embedded steel reinforcement. Both were blended into the mix during the manufacturing process.
“The limited window of time and constricted working space in the Liberty Tunnels created difficult conditions,” said Dennis Bittner, QUIKRETE regional sales representative.
“ QUIKRETE Shotcrete MS - AR Fiberglass Reinforced was the ideal solution because it allowed for an extremely quick cure time between applications with little-to-no dust creation. Because the crew was able to spend more time working and less time cleaning, the project was completed ahead of schedule and under budget.”
After prepping the area using hydrodemolition and cleaning exposed rebar, workers cleaned the substrate and moistened it to a saturated surface-dry (SSD) condition. Reaching up to 26 in. thick in some sections of the project, the shotcrete was applied with an Allentown PD1-GRH 610 gunning rig with a 750-cu-ft per minute compressor.
Crews added a temporary sealer which was removed after the initial layer cured. Then, a flash coat of shotcrete was applied at depths of one-half to 1 in. to give the top layer the smooth appearance of a gun finish and an appropriate texture to receive a waterproof topcoat.
PennDOT was able to extend the project by 76,000 sq ft of shotcrete flash coat, and the job was complete in December 2010.
“It was great to see the tunnels returned to nearly new condition and ready to serve commuters for the next 85 years,” Bittner said.
