Tusla Zoo elephant preserve

The Oxley Family Elephant Experience and Elephant Preserve at the Tulsa Zoo employed non-grouted, end-bearing Ductile Iron Piles (DIPs) for its foundation needs, which included a 3,344-square-meter barn and a 10-acre roaming area for elephants. The site's challenging geotechnical conditions featured varying layers of clay and sandy soil up to 10.4 meters deep, and shale bedrock at depths ranging from 12.8 to 13.4 meters.

These DIPs had a diameter of 170 mm, a wall thickness of 9.0 mm, and were driven into the shale bedrock to depths between 15 and 17 meters, providing compression capacities of 578 kN and tension capacities of 36 kN.