Skip to main content

Polish road strengthened by Tensar

Consultants have specified Tensar techology in the rebuilding of a deteriorating Polish highway in order to meet current standards. The use of Tensar geogrids enabled consultants Drotest and Dro-konsult Warsaw to create a stable asphalt pavement quicker and more economically than using conventional construction methods, says Tensar. The 40km long road, which connects Bartoszyce and Ketrzyhn, had exceeded its design life and clearly showed its structural weakness with bad rutting, extensive fatigue crackin
July 31, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
Consultants have specified 340 Tensar techology in the rebuilding of a deteriorating Polish highway in order to meet current standards.

The use of Tensar geogrids enabled consultants 1438 Drotest and Dro-konsult Warsaw to create a stable asphalt pavement quicker and more economically than using conventional construction methods, says Tensar.

The 40km long road, which connects Bartoszyce and Ketrzyhn, had exceeded its design life and clearly showed its structural weakness with bad rutting, extensive fatigue cracking and surface deformation. The 6m wide carriageway was carried on a narrow fill embankment with minimum shoulders and flanked by deep ditches.

Conventional techniques of installing a thick pavement structure to improve the road bearing performance would have required widening the embankment to carry the additional construction. This was an expensive option and not economically possible.

Instead, the Tensar technical design team proposed the installation of a lean concrete base carrying Tensar geogrid composite reinforced asphalt layers. Over the concrete, the contractors PBDiM Minsk Mazowiecki laid a bituminous bond coat, and rolled out the Tensar ARG composite (geogrid bonded to a paving fabric) which was then brushed flat.

Over the concrete road base they laid a new binder course followed by wearing layers of asphalt. The function of the Tensar geogrid composite was to restrict any shrinkage cracking from the concrete layer from reflecting into the asphalt. In addition, its load bearing capability will provide fatigue resistance for the asphalt layers.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Stable ground with geogrids
    March 25, 2021
    New geogrid products are claimed to reduce the quantity of earthworks required for some construction jobs by over 40%.
  • Spanish contractor Sorigué has the edge with VÖGELE SprayJet
    March 21, 2016
    Spanish contractor Sorigué, the first to use the SUPER 1800-3i SprayJet from Vögele, has pioneered paving thin overlays and the development of new mixes. The company won the contract for rehabilitating the surface course of the 3km-long dam, 10m-wide promenade in the Catalonian port city of Tarragona. Sorigué’s idea was to overlay the existing surfacing with a thin layer applied to a spray seal of polymer-modified bitumen. The spray seal prevents water penetrating inside the structure – a major advant
  • The Lessons of the Genoa bridge collapse
    April 23, 2019
    The partial collapse of the Polcevera viaduct, better known as the Morandi Bridge, has prompted debate regarding the technical and administrative aspects of maintaining road infrastructures. We discussed it with the engineer Gabriele Camomilla, former Director of Research and Maintenance of the Società Autostrade, who coordinated the only major structural intervention performed on the bridge, carried out in the early 1990s
  • FM Conway and TfL set “benchmark” for RAP use in A40 project
    November 30, 2017
    Infrastructure services company FM Conway and the UK’s Transport for London (TfL) have set “a new benchmark” for recycling in the highways industry.