Reinforced Soil Walls and Slope Reinforcement
2020
MECHELEN - MECHELEN - Belgium
Texion Geosynthetics NV
BE-MECHELEN R6
Construction phase: front view
Construction phase: shape detail
End of the construction: front view
BE-MECHELEN R6_3
Construction phase: stone placing
Problem
The construction of part of the new ring-road R6 in the municipality of Mechelen, Belgium, required the construction of 2 new road bridges. The designer adopted a very particular shape of the bridge abutment, where the two access ramps had to be built using a reinforced soil structure. The choice of Mineral Terramesh was very well appreciated because of the ease of construction and because of the nice external finishing. Moreover, the Municipality did not want to carry any maintenance of green facings, therefore the stone facing has been very well appreciated by the public authority.
Solution
The design of the reinforced soil structure has been carried out following the Eurocode 7 in combination with the CUR normative (Netherlands). Since the CUR Norms are more demanding, the Mineral Terramesh units have been additionally reinforced with Maccaferri´s geogrids. The possibility to modify the units to follow the exact shape of the bridge has been very well appreciated by the contractor Stadsbader NV, that later chose the same system for the big project Oosterweel Linkeroever.