Abstract
Timber pile has been traditionally used as the primary foundation type in the Canadian Arctic. Pile performance is vulnerable to climate change and other environmental impacts that lead to building subsidence or material damage. The wood blocking system, one of the building remediation techniques in the Arctic, is a relatively new method for replacing severely damaged piles and supporting the superstructure in the permafrost of the Canadian Arctic. However, a health monitoring program for the remedied building in the Arctic is absent in the literature. This paper introduces the wood blocking method for building remediation in the Arctic. A case study of a three-story apartment in the Canadian Arctic was elaborated. The wood blockings were located on the compacted gravel instead of the natural soil to replace the heavily-decayed timber piles. Another objective of this paper was to demonstrate the field monitoring program deployed in 2019 to monitor the performance of the wood blocking system and building. Data were collected and transferred via the mobile network. The research identified the correlation between the seasonal weather and the performance of wood blockings and the building. The movement of the wood blocking agreed with the seasonal weather, i.e., heave in winter and subsidence in summer. Moreover, the accumulated subsidence was detected as 7 mm at one location, which was identified as the result of seasonal weather in consecutive years. Thus special attention should be paid when the wood blocking system was adopted.
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Data availability statement
The data used in this study are stored on a dedicated server at the University of Alberta and are available on request from the corresponding author.
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Acknowledgements
The authors appreciated Peter Beaulieu of NRC for his unwavering support to this field monitoring program and Sham Gopie, CQL, for his assistance in installing the equipment on site.
Funding
This research was funded by the National Research Council Canada (NRC)—the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) under Grant number 932041.
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Conceptualization, LD, RA, and CL; methodology, LD, RA, and CL; formal analysis, LD and CL; investigation, RA and CL; resources, RA and NG; data curation, CL; writing—original draft preparation, CL; writing—review and editing, LD; supervision, LD; project administration, NG, LD, and RA; funding acquisition, LD and RA All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Liu, C., Anderson, R., Gopie, N. et al. Field performance of wood blocking method for remediating a building in the Canadian Arctic. J Civil Struct Health Monit 12, 875–889 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13349-022-00583-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13349-022-00583-3