YULMAN STADIUM AT TULANE

 

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

Yulman Stadium opened in September 2014 at Tulane University’s Uptown New Orleans campus. Yulman Stadium is an open air football stadium with a seating capacity of 30,000. The project has an estimated cost of $73 million.

The stadium project includes a state-of-the-art synthetic field surface, a LED video display scoreboard, a luxury club section, club decks, and a multipurpose hall, all constructed within the confines of existing structures on campus over a design and construction window of under two years. Eustis Engineering Services, L.L.C. performed a subsurface exploration for the project, as well as, geotechnical engineering services for the design of the stadium foundations.

The subsurface exploration was performed through a combination of undisturbed soil borings, cone penetration tests, and geoprobe hydraulic sampling. The sampling was performed through the former synthetic surface practice field to minimize surface disturbance, as the field was still in use by the Tulane University football team.

Professional engineering services included the development of soil design parameters to characterize the footprint of the site, pile and drilled shaft designs for both vertical and lateral loads, estimates of settlement, and recommendations for the construction of a below-ground storm water storage system. Professional services also included participation with the design team to address geotechnical issues that arose during construction and to explore options for potential cost savings while maintaining an aggressive construction schedule.

In addition to the geotechnical design services, Eustis Engineering provided construction quality control and materials testing services. These services included static and dynamic testing of test piles and production piles, logging of pile installations, thermal integrity profile testing of drilled shaft foundations, and review of vibration monitoring records. At peak production, pile driving activities utilized as many as four pile driving rigs at a time with over 3,800 timber and precast concrete piles installed for the stadium’s foundation.