Associate Professor at the SPbGASU Department of Geotechnics Andrey Boyarintsev won the autumn season of the business incubator "Energotechnohub Petersburg", presenting the project "Sand.P: sand coating for piles". The technology he developed makes pile foundations easier and cheaper in the conditions of the Far North, while reducing construction costs.

Business incubator "Energotechnohub Petersburg" is a program for the creation and promotion of technology startups in various areas of industry and energy. Andrey Boyarintsev's project was recognized as the best of 90 projects submitted. Along with SPbGASU, the competition was attended by teams from Bauman Moscow State Technical University (MSTU), Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MEPhI), Perm National Research Polytechnic University (PNRPU), ITMO National Research University and other renowned universities.

"In my project, I relied on the key problems of building and structure foundations in the Far North, where low-rise buildings on disproportionately large foundations are built for the oil and gas industry: long steel piles of large diameters are used, which have a significant weight. This is primarily due to the smoothness of the surface of the steel piles, which is why they do not grip the ground well, so builders use long piles to withstand the design load. The situation is also complicated by the effect of frost heaving: when freezing, the volume of the soil increases, which leads to its surface rising and the piles coming out of the ground. To eliminate this problem, I worked on creating a technology that allows increasing the roughness of the outer surfaces of steel piles by applying a sand coating to them. With its help, the piles better grip the soil, and their bearing capacity increases. As a result, in order to withstand the design load, for example, not 12-meter piles will be required, but 9-meter ones,” explained Andrey Boyarintsev.

He added that he had worked on this topic as part of his PhD thesis, where he developed the scientific foundations of the technology, and the Sand.P project was a continuation of this research in a practical way. Participation in the business incubator gives young scientists the opportunity to turn their scientific developments into technology with the support of industry representatives, the winner emphasized.

"It is through constructive dialogue within the incubator that you can determine the value of your project. For example, for two months I worked closely with a representative of a company that is building facilities in the Far North. We managed to make a serious step in solving this problem, and the victory and the prize of one million rubles open up the opportunity for me to conduct further research to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the technology," concluded Andrey Boyarintsev.