Investigation and Initial Stability Analysis of a Wharf on Severely Deteriorated Steel H-Piles

The wharf at the Fore River Shipyard was built for shipbuilding circa 1960; recently, it was home to the USS Salem, a permanently-moored retired U.S. Navy heavy cruiser that served as a museum. True to its intended purpose, the wharf is a robust structure comprised of a thick reinforced concrete superstructure supported by many steel H-piles. In 2013, the project team performed a condition assessment of the wharf and discovered that many of the H-piles were significantly deteriorated, some with full thickness section loss at the low-tide elevation. This discovery forced the team to change the investigative approach for fear of collapse, only collecting as much data as necessary to understand the stability of the wharf. Meanwhile, the team performed three-dimensional, non-linear analyses that consider non-uniform pile deterioration to assess the likelihood of collapse and possible collapse mechanisms.