Reducing Settlement with Groundwork Issues

Groundworks Overview

Leca® LWA is used extensively as a lightweight aggregate for civil engineering and structural applications.

Reducing Settlement with Groundwork Issues

The ability to reduce settlement of an embankment when incorporating Leca® LWA can offer huge benefits; reducing timescales from years to a few months and even, in some instances, eliminate settlement periods altogether.
Construction of embankments over weak and compressible soil deposits, where the loading of the embankment causes soil consolidation and settlement, is common.

Depending on the height of the embankment, the depth of the weak soil deposit and the consolidation properties of the soil strata, total settlements can be very deep and problematic in terms of road evenness, function and durability of the road construction.

In the most difficult cases, various combinations of soil strengthening techniques are available, for example, preloading, vertical drainage and deep stabilisation with piles all of which are time consuming and costly to install.

By lightening the embankment with Leca® LWA, subsoil strengthening and lengthy settlement can be reduced or even avoided altogether.

Reducing Settlement

Using Leca® LWA on large scale cut and fill operations and construction on soft soils or bad ground can overcome stability problems, reducing the risk of landslide and deformation. Used in road embankments, Leca® LWA exerts much lower horizontal earth pressures compared with other backfill materials, helps improve stability and reduce the need for counterfill.

When widening existing carriageway or rail embankment, the weight of the newly constructed fills can often result in the new surface settling lower than the original surface and could pull the existing surface out of level.

Leca® LWA has an installed bulk density of approximately 20% of that of general fill materials and will considerably reduce settlement of the road or rail carriageway, both immediately and in the long term. Widening and replacing existing carriageways is also simplified by using Leca® LWA with no specialist techniques necessary.

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Further Geotechnical Areas

Leca® LWA is used extensively as a lightweight aggregate for civil engineering and structural applications. Through promotion and specification, our client base is continually finding further solutions and interesting uses for this special lightweight aggregate.