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Pile Driving Analyzer in the 1980's.
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Excellence: Pile Dynamics, Inc, is a company with over 50 employees led by Garland Likins and headquartered in Cleveland, OH, USA. It is the largest manufacturer of foundation dynamic testing equipment in the world. A superb team of electronic engineers, software developers and technicians make the constant development of the PDI line of products possible. PDI excels in product quality and customer support. It has a wide network of representatives spread from the Far East to Europe to South America that helps disseminate the use of its products in almost 90 countries throughout the world.
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History: Pile Dynamics, Inc. was formed in 1972 to commercialize the Pile Driving Analyzer® (PDA) and its associated software now known as CAPWAP®. It soon started to increase its line of foundation testing systems. By the late 1970's PDI offered, in addition to the PDA and CAPWAP, a hand held instrument to detect and count blows during pile driving (the Saximeter). PDI then developed the Hammer Performance Analyzer, the Angle Analyzer and, in the 1980?s, the Pile Integrity Tester. By the 1990's PDI was moving fast to incorporate new developments in electronics and personal computers to its measuring instruments. The PDA model PAK was introduced in 1991, as was the PIT Collector, the predecessor of the Pile Integrity Tester of today. By that time, geotechnical engineers had widely embraced the wave equation analysis software GRLWEAP.
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A young Frank Rausche collects dynamic testing data.
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Cross-Hole Analyzer model CHAMP.
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Growth: The SPT Analyzer joined the PDI line of products in 1995, and the
Pile Installation Recorder (for Augered cast-in-place / CFA Piles) in 1998. The
Cross-Hole Analyzer for inspecting the quality of drilled shafts was introduced
in 2000. By that year, cellular phone technology allowed Pile Dynamics to develop
a PDA with remote testing capabilities, the PAL-R. The 2007 PDA Model PAX updated
that technology with data transmission via broad band Internet. In 2008 the PAX was
enhanced to accept data from wireless sensors. The evolution from the Pile Driving
Analyzer first introduced in the 1970s to the 21st century wireless PAX reflects how
PDI strives to embrace and incorporate state of the art technologies into its products.
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Today: Pile Dynamics has partnered with Foundation & Geotechnical Engineering, FGE, for the introduction of a product that
embodies a new, temperature based technology for drilled shaft integrity testing: the Thermal
Integrity Profiler. PDI has also created a wholly owned subsidiary,
Inspection Instruments, Inc. , to commercialize the Acoustic Concrete Tester (ACT),
an instrument that measures thickness and detects flaws in concrete structural elements such as
pavements, walls and tunnel liners.
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Pile Driving Analyzer model PAX.
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