As
one of the largest, most complex projects
undertaken recently in Seattle, the
new Helix Project includes laboratories,
administration buildings, and power
plant on a single campus located along
the Seattle waterfront at a 19-acre
site at pier 88. Our
involvement included providing advanced vibration
analysis throughout this massive project.
Our evaluation
began with conducting environmental monitoring on
rail traffic through the site for vibration. This
involved long-term monitoring and short-term event
monitoring to develop a large database of vibration
impact data from rail traffic through the site.
An additional source of vibration
was identified as the grain terminal rail cars early
in our evaluation. After
unloading each car they were pushed down the line
to couple with earlier unloaded cars causing impact
related vibration. This turned out to be one
of the most disturbing sources at the site. Our
evaluations included over 120 event-monitoring files.
After
carefully defining the “sources” we then began the
process of evaluating paths to sensitive office
and laboratory spaces. In this process our
evaluation included all interior sources as well.
More than 500 source-path-receiver
models were developed to treat sensitive areas in
each building in our final evaluations
Ambient
structural vibration measurements were conducted
at all existing sensitive Immunex labs, to help
establish the design criteria for the new buildings. Design
recommendations included vibration control and vibration
isolation of all mechanical equipment.
