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Aurora Brings Expertise to San Antonio with New Office Opening
Aurora has recently announced the opening of a new office in San Antonio, TX. The new office, located at 4040 Broadway, Suite 605, San Antonio, TX 78279, will allow the company to expand its reach and work on more projects in the area. The expansion comes as a result of the company’s desire to be closer to its clients and better to serve the needs of the San Antonio community. Aurora is already well known in the area, having previously worked on several civil engineering projects for the San Antonio Water System (SAWS), including the ‘W-1 Leon Creek and E-4 Sanitary Sewer Outfall System’ and the ‘Vista Ridge Pipeline, Austin to San Antonio’. With the opening of the San Antonio office, Aurora will be able to provide more comprehensive services to its clients in the San Antonio area. The company’s expansion demonstrates its commitment to providing cost-effective solutions that work and serve the community’s needs.
Read MoreDr. Meng Liu, Ph.D. Recognized in ASCE Journal
Thrust Restraint of Buried Continuous Pressure PipeConsidering Pipe–Soil Interaction “We are excited to announce that Dr. Meng Liu has been published in ASCE Journal! We are very proud that he is part of the Aurora Team! Read and excerpt below.” The Aurora Team Abstract: Design and analysis of thrust restraint for a buried continuous pressure pipe is essentially a pipe–soil interaction (PSI) problem regardless of pipe materials and restraint methods. In practice, thrust block and restrained joints are the most commonly used restraint methods, and dual restraint systems using both methods can be found in many pipeline projects even though they are treated independently. However, no analytical procedure is available to analyze the performance of such dual restraint systems. Therefore, a closed-form linear-elastic solution considering PSI is proposed to analyze pipes restrained with both thrust blocks and restrained joints or continuous pipes restrained with thrust blocks. The solution also considers the contribution of friction resistance due to increased normal pressure at the pipe–soil interface, as the pipe moves laterally into and longitudinally through soils simultaneously. The solution can be easily implemented by hand-calculation or a spreadsheet for various pipe material, geometry, and soil stiffness. The example provided demonstrates that the current guideline procedure overestimates the restraint length and underestimates the axial force slightly because the frictional resistance from lateral pipe movement is neglected. A comprehensive parametric study has been conducted to illustrate the effects of different design parameters on the internal forces, displacements, and restraint length of pipes. It is found that soil stiffness is the most critical parameter in resisting thrust force. Continue Reading..
Read MoreAurora Moves Houston Headquarters to Uptown Area
Aurora relocated its office to the Uptown area of Houston. Started in 2015, Aurora has grown from one principal to a team of 15 professionals who provide full-service consulting engineering and construction management services on public infrastructure projects for cities, counties, and other governmental agencies. “We’ve been so fortunate to have gained great new clients and challenging projects over the past four years,” says Rafael Ortega, President of Aurora. “This office move will allow us to be physically closer to our core clients in the Houston region, as well as give us more room for our growing team.” One of Aurora’s key projects has been serving as the Lead Construction Engineer for the Uptown Development Authority. In this role, the firm supports the Authority’s ongoing $150M construction program to reconstruct the infrastructure within the Galleria Area. The most notable project involved the reconstruction of over 9,000 LF of Post Oak Boulevard from Richmond Avenue to IH-610. Aurora’s new address is: Aurora Technical Services, LLC2121 Sage Road, 150; Houston, TX 77056
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