Ground Improvement
2001
Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland
Dumfries & Galloway Council
Dumfries & Galloway Council
Dumfries & Galloway Council
C46 Road Rehabilitation, Galloway Forest Park
Heavy traffic of over 60 logging trucks per day
RoadMesh ™ was installed in 2001
No distress after 9 years
Adjacent distressed unreinforced sections in Ayrshire
Problem
The Galloway Forest Park was established in 1947 and covers nearly 300 square miles. Aside from receiving nearly a million visitors per year, the park includes valuable woodland which produces 500,000t of timber each year.
Over 60 heavily laden logging trucks use the roads daily, including a 2-mile long section which runs over boggy ground. This makes the road uneven, exacerbating the damage caused by the trucks. Cracking and rutting are the main problems of the highway. Dumfries and Galloway Council required a solution that would reduce the almost constant maintenance demanded by these conditions.
Solution
The road was rehabilitated in 2001 with a 60mm Road Mesh™ reinforced overlay. Road Mesh™ was designed for use within the bituminous bound layers of pavements. In remedial overlays, the old wearing course is usually planed-off and the Road Mesh™ was placed on the exposed surface and then overlayed with a new base course plus a wearing course. Road Mesh™ causes the overlay to work as a cohesive mass, absorbing the horizontal tensile stresses and spreading the imposed traffic loadings over a wider footprint, thus reducing its damaging effect.
10 years later, the C46 was inspected and the overlay was surface-dressed. It was found to be performing well with no major cracking or rutting, despite being subjected to heavy logging trucks. Adjacent unreinforced sections of highway over the county border in Ayrshire, experience similar traffic and show significantly more distress.
Maccaferri Road Mesh™ provides high tensile strength at low strain and, together with its unique 3D geometry, creates excellent aggregate interlock to optimise load transfer and shear resistance. The system was initially developed to inhibit reflective cracking in asphalt layers and research has shown that the incorporation of Road Mesh™ can enhance the working life of the whole pavement.