Kaiser Aluminum Extrusion Plant

Kaiser Aluminum Extrusion Facility

Kaiser Aluminum Extrusion Plant – Completed 2010

Kaiser Aluminum Corporation, a producer of high-quality fabricated aluminum products for aerospace, custom automotive and industrial applications, recently redeveloped 264,000 square feet of the former General Motors stamping plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan; an $80 million state-of-the-art billet casting and extrusion facility. Components of the project include: addition of a 4000 Ton extrusion press line, a 6000 Ton extrusion press line, a cast house, new office spaces, and loading docks.

Concrete Equipment Foundations with Mass Concrete Mix Designs

This project involved some unique challenges related to building the concrete equipment foundations. The former General Motors Stamping plant in Comstock Township had press pits 18 feet below the main floor level. The challenge for Kaiser Aluminum and Byce was to support the heavy equipment at the main floor level above the basement. Consequently, the 6000 Ton and 4000 Ton Presses required foundations, approximately 25’deep x 50′ long x 18′ wide, which needed to be constructed at the basement level and rise up through the main plant floor. Stretcher equipment foundations have loads of up to 200,000 pounds in uplift requiring mass concrete foundations to resist the uplift. To control the heat of hydration generated temperature differential within these large concrete sections, a mass concrete mix design with 70% slag replacement of cement was utilized. To support some of the extrusion equipment, existing 54″ plate girders were re-utilized. These plate girders previously supported General Motors stamping presses.

Floor Reinforcement with Self Consolidating Concrete Beams

Another significant challenge was increasing the floor live load up to 2,000 pounds per square foot as required by Kaiser Aluminum during their 2009 plant build out. The prior floor structure designed by Byce & Associates, Inc. in 2004 was designed for 600 pounds per square foot by way of a 6″ concrete floor slab on a metal deck, supported by existing W12x40 beams @ 30″ O.C. that were rotated 90 degrees and laid sideways. In order to reuse the hundreds of W12 beams from GM’s original floor, the beams were laid sideways to allow the new floor to line up with the surrounding slab on grade after the GM wood flooring was removed.

The challenge in 2009 was reinforcing this floor to 2,000 psf. Byce developed a design that involved installing new 10,000psi concrete beams between the existing sideways steel beams. Self-consolidating concrete (Concrete with a slump of 26 inches) was pumped down through the existing 6″ concrete floor to create new concrete beams between the existing flat laying steel beams.

  • Kaiser Aluminum
    Floor Reinforcement (Before)
  • Kaiser Aluminum
    Kaiser Floor Reinforcement (After)
  • Kaiser Aluminum
    4,000 Ton Press
  • Kaiser Aluminum
    4,000 Ton Press Foundation
  • Kaiser Aluminum
    6,000 Ton Press
  • Kaiser Aluminum
    4,000 Ton Press Foundation

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