Cheap apartments for sale in China, any interest?
Unbelievable!!!

Short and hollow piling on soft soil (clay) on a river bank, and building collapsed en-bloc.

Sub-standard fundamentals and poor foundation will lead to later catastrophe & disaster, same as in human.

damn... my deck has piles deeper than that.

reduce. reuse. recycle

but seriously, wth are engineers for?

Holy shit

Was it occupied?

jpsum wrote

damn... my deck has piles deeper than that.

I put a better foundation under my hot tub

The building design was fine. The excavator is the one who screwed up (stupid contractors... what a surprise).
There was supposed to be an underground parking facility next to the building. So what would an excavator do? Dig on one side of the building while piling up the excavated soil on another. Does it surprise anyone that the load from the overburden soil sheared off all the piles and pushing everything into the ditch? The piles failed by snapping, not because they were not deep enough. They could have been 500' deep and it wouldn't have made the slightest difference.
Pile foundations are NEVER designed for this type of lateral loading. Take it from me. I have a PE license in NYS (and two Ivy League engineering degrees).
No engineer in this world would have foreseen this kind of stupidity in construction, just like no engineer in this world would have designed a building to withstand the impact of a 737. This screwup cannot even be chalked up to corruption or cutting corners. This is sheer stupidity, pure and simple.
Heck I have designed several 7-10 story buildings that sit on nothing but 25' long WOOD piles. They seem to be working just fine

i'll second that.

(cali PE license, and 1 ivy league degree)

NYSPEM3 wrote

The building design was fine. The excavator is the one who screwed up (stupid contractors... what a surprise).
There was supposed to be an underground parking facility next to the building. So what would an excavator do? Dig on one side of the building while piling up the excavated soil on another. Does it surprise anyone that the load from the overburden soil sheared off all the piles and pushing everything into the ditch? The piles failed by snapping, not because they were not deep enough. They could have been 500' deep and it wouldn't have made the slightest difference.
Pile foundations are NEVER designed for this type of lateral loading. Take it from me. I have a PE license in NYS (and two Ivy League engineering degrees).
No engineer in this world would have foreseen this kind of stupidity in construction, just like no engineer in this world would have designed a building to withstand the impact of a 737. This screwup cannot even be chalked up to corruption or cutting corners. This is sheer stupidity, pure and simple.
Heck I have designed several 7-10 story buildings that sit on nothing but 25' long WOOD piles. They seem to be working just fine

So the ground sort of went sliding? Yeah that'll do it.
And look at all the similar buildings next to it. Those aren't going to sell well.

NYSPEM3 wrote

The building design was fine. The excavator is the one who screwed up (stupid contractors... what a surprise).
There was supposed to be an underground parking facility next to the building. So what would an excavator do? Dig on one side of the building while piling up the excavated soil on another. Does it surprise anyone that the load from the overburden soil sheared off all the piles and pushing everything into the ditch? The piles failed by snapping, not because they were not deep enough. They could have been 500' deep and it wouldn't have made the slightest difference.
Pile foundations are NEVER designed for this type of lateral loading. Take it from me. I have a PE license in NYS (and two Ivy League engineering degrees).
No engineer in this world would have foreseen this kind of stupidity in construction, just like no engineer in this world would have designed a building to withstand the impact of a 737. This screwup cannot even be chalked up to corruption or cutting corners. This is sheer stupidity, pure and simple.
Heck I have designed several 7-10 story buildings that sit on nothing but 25' long WOOD piles. They seem to be working just fine

No matter how well your design was....if the field execution failed....it doesn't matter....

Imagine if you living in the next building and waking up seeing that...

hahhaha
Chuck norris sneezed!

NYSPEM3 wrote

The building design was fine. The excavator is the one who screwed up (stupid contractors... what a surprise).
There was supposed to be an underground parking facility next to the building. So what would an excavator do? Dig on one side of the building while piling up the excavated soil on another. Does it surprise anyone that the load from the overburden soil sheared off all the piles and pushing everything into the ditch? The piles failed by snapping, not because they were not deep enough. They could have been 500' deep and it wouldn't have made the slightest difference.
Pile foundations are NEVER designed for this type of lateral loading. Take it from me. I have a PE license in NYS (and two Ivy League engineering degrees).
No engineer in this world would have foreseen this kind of stupidity in construction, just like no engineer in this world would have designed a building to withstand the impact of a 737. This screwup cannot even be chalked up to corruption or cutting corners. This is sheer stupidity, pure and simple.
Heck I have designed several 7-10 story buildings that sit on nothing but 25' long WOOD piles. They seem to be working just fine

way to toot your own horn fellas

dth656 wrote

i'll second that.

(cali PE license, and 1 ivy league degree)

you dont have to prove your qualifications

drift90 wrote

hahhaha
Chuck norris sneezed!

no...Chuck Norris just looked over towards China from Texas and that happened...

E90SLAM wrote

No matter how well your design was....if the field execution failed....it doesn't matter....

Exactly. In this case, the contractors of the building may have absolutely nothing to do with the excavator... now they are being dragged through mud because the excavator had an IQ of 5.

I would not be surprised if heads would roll (literally) after the investigation. Having dealt with my fair share of incompetent contractors, I do not necessarily disagree with the Chinese approach.

lol Chinese build quality?

wtf

NYSPEM3 wrote

Exactly. In this case, the contractors of the building may have absolutely nothing to do with the excavator... now they are being dragged through mud because the excavator had an IQ of 5.

I would not be surprised if heads would roll (literally) after the investigation. Having dealt with my fair share of incompetent contractors, I do not necessarily disagree with the Chinese approach.

Or...the design in paper have adequate foundation build up and support...but field contractor took some cost cutting and use less materials as planned....with failure of QA/QC inspector (probably bribed?).....can cause such thing to happen....

E90SLAM wrote

no...Chuck Norris just looked over towards China from Texas and that happened...

LOLOLOL!

Firm's ignorance led to toppling of Shanghai building, report says By Will Clem and Lillian Zhang. July 4, 2009.

An official investigation into the collapse of an unfinished building in Shanghai has said that the accident was due to the construction company's "ignorance", rather than flaws in the design or building materials. However, the report stopped short of apportioning blame, and has been criticized for failing to address key issues.

The report said the collapse was caused by earth, excavated to make a 4.6-meter deep pit for an underground car park alongside the building, being piled to depths of up to 10 meters on the other side of the structure. The weight of the pile created a "pressure differential" which led to a shift in the soil structure, eventually weakening the foundations and causing them to fail. This situation "may" have been aggravated by several days of heavy rain leading up to the collapse, but investigators would not say whether this was a crucial factor. The report said the construction company - Shanghai Zhongxin Construction - "did not consider clearly" that the earth pile could have such a devastating effect.
Investigators stopped short of saying whether the company's errors were negligent or easily avoidable. However, they stressed that the building's foundations and construction materials all complied with the city's building regulations.

Huang Rong , director of the Shanghai Urban Construction and Communications Council, said inspections had shown that none of the remaining 10 apartment blocks was in immediate danger. "The surrounding buildings are now stable," he said. "The safety inspection of these homes will be the second phase of our professional team's work."
Jiang Huancheng , an architect and a lead investigator for the report, said it had been an "enormous shock" to see the site for the first time. "In my 46 years in the industry, I have never seen or heard of this," he said. "To put it simply this was ignorance leading to rashness. We need to take this accident as an important lesson ... and ensure that it does not happen again."
Several days before the release of the report, Wu Hang , Mr Jiang's assistant, accused the construction company of incompetence and lacking "common sense". Mr Wu said the investigation had found there had been no structures to support the walls of the car park pit, and this had been a key factor contributing to the accident.



(1) An underground garage was being dug on the south side, to a depth of 4.6 meters
(2) The excavated dirt was being piled up on the north side, to a height of 10 meters
(3) The building experienced uneven lateral pressure from south and north
(4) This resulted in a lateral pressure of 3,000 tonnes, which was greater than why the pilings could tolerate. Thus the building toppled over in the southerly direction.


First, the apartment building was constructed


Then the plan called for an underground garage to be dug out.
The excavated soil was piled up on the other side of the building.


Heavy rains resulted in water seeping into the ground.


The building began to shift and the concrete pilings were snapped
due to the uneven lateral pressures.


The building began to tilt.


And thus came the eighth wonder of the world.

Nice explanation! Who needs CNN?!?!

wow.

Crazy how it fell over instead of collapsing.