St. Louis Service Base Floating Wharf Mooring System Replacement

The purpose of this project was to replace the existing floating wharf mooring system at the St. Louis Service Base. The Marine Design Center of the U.S. Corps of Engineers developed a three-pile cluster system concept. The clusters consisted of one vertical pile and two batter piles. Because the hydraulic analysis showed a high degree of scour that could remove the sand layer above the limestone substrata, no lateral or frictional resistance of the soil was considered in designing the piles. Piles in rock sockets were selected to resist the uplift loads due to high wind loads on the tall, spare lock gates stored at the floating wharf. This paper focuses on the design of the rock sockets for steel pipe piles with large uplift loads and the lessons learned during the design and construction of this system.