Aurora Flight Deck Simulator, 14 Wing Greenwood Helical Foundation System

The Aurora Flight Simulator at 14 Wing Greenwood is the first Canadian military full flight simulator to ahieve Transport Canada’s highest certification which means that it’s so sophisticated that in some cases training time can be logged as actual flight time.

This 28 million dollar piece of flight training equipment was supported in extremely poor sandy soils using the  Helical Piles Foundation System.

The Helical Piles were designed to not only support normal building loads but more importantly, were required to resist the dynamic and gyrating loads imposed by the flight deck simulator of up to 70,000 lbs applied spasmodically in any direction.

This foundation system consisted of square shaft helical piles equipped with a helical lead section large enough to support the design loads and incorportated a column of grout to stabilize the shaft laterally which was extensively load tested to ASTM standards.