Our engineering department and shop pulled another rabbit out of the hat and completed an order for 24 pieces of 3″ deflection SLRJs in less than four weeks, which really meant three, because we needed an extra week to get the mounts to and from our galvanizer way over in New Jersey! The mounts will support a 385,000 lb. cooling tower at a new Monsanto facility in St. Louis. We wanted to share some photos of these gigantic mounts under construction so you had a better idea of what they look like.
When we think of earthquakes, we all tend to think of California, but St Louis Missouri also has a significant seismic risk due to its proximity to the New Madrid fault located on the Missouri Tennessee border. The New Madrid fault produced the largest recorded earthquake in the continental United States back in 1811. That quake was so powerful that it caused church bells to sway and ring as far away as Boston, and reversed the course of the Mississippi river for several days. Geologists tell us that another major New Madrid quake is a strong possibility.
When we supply isolators and seismic restraints for projects in that area of the country, we have to be sure they can resist the very high code predicted seismic forces, which for this project were 0.5G, or 193,000 lbs. We do this by boxing in the springs with structural side members and vertical restraining bolts that do not interfere with the spring isolation except when they are doing their jobs during an earthquake. Our professional engineers also analyze and make provisions for the attachment of the equipment to the mountings and the mountings to the structure. They also check to make sure that everything can handle the wind load as well.
When isolating very heavy machinery we design for the use of a hydraulic jack to transfer the equipment load from the structural side members to the spring. Our SLRJ has a space between the spring and the top plate for the jack that compresses the spring effortlessly before transferring the load to the adjustment bolts.
We are able to deliver faster than anyone else because of our huge inventory of high deflection springs and what we believe to be the largest and best equipped shop in the industry for both steel and rubber.
Please call us when you need really big isolators in a hurry!