Geosynthetics October/November 2023 - 32

Safe Travels: Airports zone in on geotextiles
Terramesh. Similarly for chimney drain,
graded filter is required. "
Concrete culverts collect the drainage
from the slopes and runway and divert
the water off-site.
" When you cut into a mountain, you
are going to encounter these streams,
and the water from these streams needed
to be collected and released at the front
of the structure, " Mandavkar says. This
protects the walls from water pressure
building up behind them.
Geotextiles also were used as separator
and filter wrapped around drainage
pipes, which required binding wire for
holding the geotextile around the pipes.
The geotextile was cut in pieces to match
the chimney drain height, which was
wrapped to avoid clogging of the chimney
drain.
The resilience of the MSE structure
and other elements have been proven
multiple times, especially in April 2021
when a magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck
FIGURE 4 Gabion wall diagram for Pakyong
Airport's MSE project in Pakyong, India.
Photo courtesy of Maccaferri
northeast India; the wall stayed in place.
" The structures performed excellently
under earthquake loading, due to their
flexible nature, " Mandavkar says.
Erosion control at
Billings Logan Airport
For runway reconstruction at the Billings
Logan Airport (BLI) on Montana's
dry eastern plains, a geotextile served
stormwater detention and erosion control
on slopes.
" The airport is constructed on sandstone
rock with little to no topsoil, making
vegetation very difficult to establish
and erosion prevalent, " says Cory
Schneider, business development manager
for Presto Geosystems in Appleton,
Wis. The project came to the company's
attention via its website.
During storms, water streams through
the facility's stormwater pipes at high
velocity. The detention ponds provide a
buffer to control the rate of that discharge
and prevent erosion.
" The engineer provided projectspecific
details such as velocity, unit discharge,
bed slope and channel geometry
for the channel and slope length and
slope angle for detention pond slopes, "
Schneider says. " Using this information,
in conjunction with specialized calculation
methods developed in collaboration
with the Colorado State University [CSU]
hydraulics lab, we were able to recommend
a cell size, cell depth, rock size and
staking pattern that would be able to withstand
the stated hydraulic conditions. "
The product selected was 3D GEOWEB®
geocells, which were used for
open channel erosion protection and
were placed over a geosynthetic clay liner
(GCL) on the side slopes of two detention
ponds.
" It's a honeycomb-like, three-dimenFIGURE
5 Construction workers carved away soil from the runway to use below for the mechanically
stabilized wall at the Pakyong Airport. Photo courtesy of Maccaferri
32
Geosynthetics | October November 2023
sional, cellular product, " says Joe Kaul,
owner of Kaul Corp., an independent
representative for Presto Geosystems. " In
this case it was [placed] 6 inches deep.
The cells are connected together to form
a mat that has diamond-shaped cells that
the rock goes into and has a hard time
falling out of. "
Geosynthetics October/November 2023

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