I-95 Stafford County

The Longest Custom Precast Column in Company History

Smith-Midland Corporation provided design, panel-post layout drawings and fabrication of absorptive noise wall panels and pre-stressed concrete posts for the VDOT I-95/Route 630 Interchange reconstruction and widening project located in Stafford, VA for Shirley Contracting.

The project required a sound absorptive product be used on the highway face of the noise wall. Smith-Midland used our own SoftSound sound absorptive concrete which allows the sound wall to absorb traffic noise. SoftSound has an NRC (Noise Reduction Coefficient) of 0.80. This provides VDOT with a durable, long-lasting solution to reducing noise along its highways.

Smith-Midland produced and delivered 46,800 square feet (308 pieces) of sound wall using New England Drystack finish on the highway side of the wall and Fuzzy Rake finish on the residential side.

This project also used rubber form liner to provide VDOT with some aesthetic variation along I-95. On this project, VDOT chose a New England Drystack finish. The versatility of the precast concrete allowed this finish to be achieved at a very reasonable cost.

For this project, Smith-Midland manufactured the longest pre-stressed sound wall column in the company’s history, measuring 67.5 feet. Hauling the long post required longer flatbed trailers than what we normally use. We had to rent two flatbed stretch trailers to haul these posts to the job site.