Innovative Deepening of Maher Container Terminal Berths 64/66

Operational needs at Maher Terminals LLC (Maher) at Port Elizabeth in the Port of New York and New Jersey required that Berths 64 and 66 be deepened from 45 ft water depth to 50 ft. Installation of a new wall at the berths would have been costly, impacted operations, and disrupted the coping line of the longer marginal wharf. An innovative solution was developed to consider attenuation of lateral load provided by the existing waterside steel crane beam piles. These piles, once considered, would reduce the earth load applied to the existing bulkhead due to soil arching. Two-dimensional (2D) Plaxis finite element analyses performed considering the contribution of these crane piles show that the existing bulkhead could provide the required stability without installing a new wall, provided that additional post-tensioned tie rods be added. The deepening was successfully carried out with a wall displacement monitoring program. The paper summarizes the innovative process to develop the solution and details of the deepening analyses, as well as the monitoring results.