Tuesday, October 04, 2011

"Floating" Permy-Senadin Road Design

The dual carriageway expansion for the Permyjaya and Senadin road is now under construction. This segment of road is to be built over land, which I would call it ...
... swamp and peat (or soft soil). Even though there is no rain, the place is generally quite wet. I saw a similar kind of road currently being built just across the border in Brunei. They dug deep and literally remove all the top soil. Rock was then poured in to form the foundation. The traditional method of construction is therefore high cost and slow. In Miri, about 50cm-1 meter of the top soil were removed...
.. and then, bamboo (initially used) and now solid wood timbers are used to line the "foundation".
Piles of solid timber can be seen!
... then a layer of Tencate PE Polyfelt was laid over the timber.
More information about the lining material can be found at Tencate.
Back to this discussion about this method of road design, it seems that they are being used overseas to great success! Instead of using bamboo and timber, tyre bales were also used. Perhaps, used tyres can now be put to good used instead of being a nuisance.
The cost of such road construction is definitely low and I would call it clever. Therefore, we shall see how long the surface can remain smooth.
More information about this type of road construction can be found if you google "Floating Road Construction". Click here for an interesting article on floating road construction.

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