Biaxial Geogrids

SEZAD plans to build a service corridor in the industrial zone of Duqm, Oman. The project aims to link Duqm refinery with a liquid jetty by allowing the Refinery to lay its pipes and connecting it to the Port. The project was awarded to Qurum Business Group LLC under the scope of Engineering, Procurement & Construction. The last 3 km stretch of the project lies close and parallel to the Duqm Road Nos. 1 and 5 project. This location is characterized by the significant presence of ‘soft clay/sabkha’ soil, which influences the construction of foundations of the proposed service corridor that consists of concrete sleepers supporting pipelines, service roads, etc. The FEED design requires the EPC contractor to replace the entire Sabkha soil with engineered fill if the depth of Sabkha is less than 4 m. For locations where Sabkha depth is more than 4 m, ground improvement techniques like stone columns shall be adopted. Nonetheless, the potential cost of doing stone columns is very high, and this prompted the EPC contractor to look for alternate viable options.

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The proposed project “Gate Access & Parking for Emirates Aluminium (EMAL)” consisted of design and construction of road pavement and parking facilities, wherein the existing subgrade was weak in nature with very low CBR value such that the Factor of Safety in the original pavement design was lower than the requirement. Intial proposal of ground improvement considered by the ‘client / consultant’ was deep removal of weak soil, backfilling & compaction works in order to improve the subgrade CBR value. Understating that the conventional ground improvement of soil replacement can prolong the project duration considerably since it requires massive earth works, the alternate option of ground stabilization by installation of geogrid in pavement layers was proposed by Maccaferri and was approved by the client after proper verifications and evaluation of its benefits.

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The Gadarwara railway station is approx. 20 km from NTPC site. NTPC constructed the Gadarwara railway siding line for transporting coal to their plant. For this railway siding work, the blanket (subballast) material was not available in the Gadrwara area and transportation of blanket material from outside area was not an economical option. This devoid of blanket material was major concern of project. Also, mining has been banned in our country due to environmental issues, so it had become difficult to get quantity for blanket for formation construction. Apart from unavailability of blanketing material, another concern of this project was the inadequacy of good subgrade material. The subgrade material was of SQ1 type which had fines content of more than 50%. Considering these aspects of project, biaxial extruded polypropylene geogrid MacGrid EG and non-woven geotextile solution MacTex N was proposed for strengthening the formation.

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