







At Buzzi Unicem USA’s Maryneal, TX, facility, increasing the plant’s bulk aggregate handling capability required a more efficient way to fill trucks from the stockpile. A simple concept was chosen, which was to elongate the stockpile and run a conveyor beneath the pile through a reclaim tunnel. Three questions arose, how to
The inherently high compressive strength of an arch structure addressed the “support the stockpile” requirement and also allowed the conveyor to be hung from the underside of the arch segments. The precast fabrication method facilitated creation of openings in the tunnel roof for the 12 hoppers, which were mounted directly to the arch using bolts field-drilled through the 8-inch thickness of the precast segments. Storing aggregate material in and above the hoppers, which control the flow of aggregate onto the conveyor will allow the trucks to be rapidly loaded directly from the conveyor, eliminating the previous and much slower method of using one bucket load at a time with a front end loader.
The inherently high compressive strength of an arch structure addressed the “support the stockpile” requirement and also allowed the conveyor to be hung from the underside of the arch segments.