Road structure – process – or apparatus – Process – In situ treatment of earth or roadway
Reexamination Certificate
1999-07-22
2001-02-06
Lillis, Eileen D. (Department: 3673)
Road structure, process, or apparatus
Process
In situ treatment of earth or roadway
C404S090000, C404S091000, C404S092000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06183159
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Art
This invention relates generally to a soil treating machine for use in treating soil for the purpose of strengthening foundation of a soft ground by improving soil construction or quality to suit a specific purpose of use, and more particularly to an automotive or vehicular soil treating machine which can travel on and along surfaces of a ground or terrain in the course of soil treatment therefor.
2. Prior Art
When excavating a ground, for example, for laying gas pipes, running water pipes or sewage pipes or for a road construction work or for other foundational work, it is the most desirable way to refill an excavated ground with removed soil without giving any treatment thereto. However, in some cases excavated soil is found unsuitable for refilling. In such a case, it becomes necessary to discard excavated soil and to refill the excavated ground with soil of better quality or property. For example, in some cases excavated soil contains rocks, fragments of bricks or concrete and/or metallic or other foreign material in a large amount, prohibiting to use the soil for refilling purposes. Further, refilling of weak soil, e.g., soil which is extremely small in grain size and highly viscous like clay or soil which has undergone weathering to an excessive degree to make solidification difficult, could result in sinking of the foundation of the refilled ground. Further, in case soil occurring in a ground excavation work is of extremely inferior quality, it has to be discarded as industrial waste despite strict legal regulations on waste of this sort. Therefore, there have been strong demands for means of soil treatment which can convert soil of substandard quality into useful resources.
In this connection, in the case of soil which simply contains foreign matter in a mixed state, it can be refilled into an excavated ground after sieving out the foreign matter. On the other hand, in the case of soil which is so soft and weak as would invite sinking of the foundation if used as a refill, it has to be treating with a soil improving or strengthening agent or material before refilling. In a soil treatment of this sort, for example, the conventional practice has been to mix lime and cement into excavated dirt and soil for solidification and to produce soil of improved construction or quality which can be suitably used for refilling an excavated ground or for other purposes.
Typical of mixing machines which have thus far been employed in soil solidification treatments for mixing a soil improving agent or material into excavated soil are mixer type machines which is equipped with a rotary mixing means and crusher type machines with rotary crusher drums. More specifically, in the case of a mixer type machine, excavated soil is uniformly mixed with a soil improving material within a tank with a mixing means. The mixing means is either a batch type having functions of agitating and mixing contents of a mixing tank or a screw type having functions of continuously feeding soil forward while mixing same with an added soil improving material for a continuous soil treating operation.
Regardless of the type of mixing means, a batch type or a continuous type, soil treating machines are generally constructed as a fixed soil processing plant operating at a fixed place. A soil processing plant of this sort usually includes, in addition to a soil processing unit and associated components like conveyers, an untreated soil depository yard for storing sand and soil to be processed and a treated soil depository yard for storing a soil product which has been treated with a soil improving material. Sand or soil which requires a treatment usually occurs at road construction sites and in foundational ground work at building sites. The amount of sand or soil which needs a treatment varies considerably depending upon the scale and the number of ground work sites and also depending upon the frequency of such ground work. Namely, depending upon these factors, the amounts of soil which is shipped to and from a soil treating plant vary over a wide range. Accordingly, as compared with a soil processing capacity of a plant, the amount of processing soil is sometimes too small and sometimes increases to such an extent as to cause overflowing from an untreated soil depository yard.
Conceivably, large fluctuations in the amounts of soil shipments to and from a soil treating plant can be suppressed by collecting sand and soil from a broad area. In such a case, however, the plant needs to have a larger soil processing capacity, which depends not only on the capacity of a soil processing machine but also on the breadth of depository yards for untreated and treated soil. A large-scale soil processing plant which requires a large space is of course subject to various restrictions in location and environmental conditions.
Excavation of sand and soil and refilling of treated soil usually take place at road construction sites or in other foundational ground work sites. Namely, despite the fact that excavation of sand and soil and refilling treated soil take place at a higher frequency and in a far greater amount in and around heavily populated urban areas, the location of a large-scale soil treating plant which require a large space is limited to barely populated suburban areas. Besides, in order to operate a large-scale soil treating plant constantly at a suitable production rate for its capacity, sand and soil has to be collected from a large area. This means that sand and soil has to be transported to and from extremely remote places. However, transportation of sand and soil by dump trucks gives rise to the problem of so-called “dump truck pollution” along traffic routes of soil carrying trucks, in addition to the problem of high transportation costs which take an extremely large proportion in the overall cost of soil treatment. High costs of soil treatments could lead to unlawful discard and destruction of the environment.
A soil treating machine of the other type, that is, a crusher type soil treating machine is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Specification H9-195265. This prior art soil treating machine is constructed as a vehicular or automotive type having a chassis on a crawler type base carrier. Mounted on the chassis is a soil crusher having a series of rotary crusher drums. In this case, excavated soil and an additive soil improving material are thrown into soil and additive hoppers, and fed toward the crusher drums by means of a feeder conveyer for transferring the charged soil and additive material toward the crusher drums. Treated soil is discharged out of the crusher by means of a discharging conveyer. Namely, in this case, all mechanisms necessary for the soil treatment are mounted on a vehicular body, so that the machine can be transported to and operated at a ground work site, for example, at a road construction site or other foundational ground work sites. While excavating, treating and refilling soil, the vehicular base carrier of the machine can be put in travel on and around the surfaces of a ground under treatment. Accordingly, the cost of soil treatment can be reduced to a significant degree by the use of the vehicular or automotive soil treating machine, which can obviate transportation of soil to and from a soil treating plant and a ground work site and preclude the problem of environmental pollution by dump trucks.
In case of the crusher type mixing machine as described above, soil is dropped onto rotary crusher drums from a feeder conveyer along with a soil improving material, and mixed with the latter as it is crushed into smaller pieces by beating actions of the rotary crusher drums. Therefore, in this case, soil is not necessarily mixed uniformly with a soil improving material. Of course, it may be possible to improve the degree of mixing by using a larger number of rotary beating drums. However, in order to apply crushing impacts for an increased number of times to the soil and additive improving material which are falling by gr
Fukuzawa Hideki
Hashimoto Hisayoshi
Hirose Kiyonobu
Ito Nobuo
Kusaki Takami
Hartmann Gary S.
Hitachi Construction Machinery Co. Ltd.
Lillis Eileen D.
Oblon & Spivak, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt P.C.
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