Atkinson Engineering staff evaluate existing foundations, design foundation repair, and design new foundations.
Floor slab elevation survey and three-dimensional analysis are used to help analyze foundation behavior. Laser levels and distance meters are used to provide accurate representations of site conditions.
Specialized software is used to provide mathematically rigorous elevation contour representations. Other software is used to generate three-dimensional models of the floor surfaces, and to separate the surface representation into its tilt and deformation components.
Check out the following images to see some examples.
Atkinson Engineering specializes in sampling soil beneath floor slabs inside houses. Concrete slabs as thick as eighteen inches are readily cored. Predetermined sampling locations are adjusted to avoid reinforcing steel, potable water pipes, and air-conditioning refrigerant lines, using a reinforcing bar locator and a pipe and cable locator. To penetrate the concrete slab without making dust, a water-cooled diamond-bit coring tool is used to core a four-inch diameter hole through the slab.
Soil typically is sampled by hand auger to the seven-foot depth.
Laboratory analyses of the soil typically include description and classification, Atterberg limits, moisture content, and sieve analyses.
Atkinson Engineering staff evaluate existing structure, design structural repair, and design new structure. In-house analysis tools include Woodworks wood design software, and RISA-3D three-dimensional structural analysis software.