Reinforced Soil Wall System
‘POLYMER STRIPED REINFORCED SOIL WALL’ SYSTEM
A retaining structure used in the filler Polymer striped frictional anchored soil wall system is a fast and economical structure that is used in retaining walls of the highways, pier abutment bridges and pier quay walls. The main elements of the systems are the precast concrete surface panels, polymer based frictional stripes and filler equipment.
The stability of a wall is provided with the operation happens with a friction that is between the filler particles and the stripes and it forms the basic principal for the wall’s exercise. Certain operations are made in a succession of an order during the construction of a wall. These are:
- Implementing the surface panels
- Filling the backside of the filler till the first anchorage level
- Implementing the anchorage stripes
- Covering the anchorage stripes with filler
The main reasons lies behind ‘Polymer Striped Reinforced Soil Wall’ is being used successfully are situated below:
| Economic | From both the equipment and time perspective, it is much cheaper in cost. |
| Speed | The construction is much faster compared to the reinforced concrete |
| Simplicity | The system only consists of three main items (surface panels, friction stripes and filler equipment) can be constructed easily with the unqualified labor, light machines and equipment. |
| Foundation Soil | Due to its flexible structure it can be used easily on the soils which have low bearing capacity that can be constructed with the expensive solutions of the classical retaining structures. |
The Polymer Striped Reinforced Soil Wall’ System’s History
The system called ‘Websol’ implemented by the firm England Soil Structures International as a stone crush wall at Warmwell in 1978 and after being implemented in England it is implemented until today in many different projects in Ireland, Kuwait, Malesia, the United Arab Kingdom, India, Indonesia, France, Canada, Australia, Mexica, Spain and Portuguese.
The first implementation in Turkey has been during the fill of state railways Foot Bridge’s in Elmadag on the road of Ankara-Samsun in 1986. On the meanwhile, this implementation is the first commercial implementation of the reinforced soil wall. Also, this system has become the first full- scaled implementation of Kınalı and Sakarya Highways.
‘The Polymer Striped Reinforced Soil Wall’ system had been a successful implementation in the new road projects and intersection of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and Toprakkale-Iskenderun Highways and TAG. At the Highway of the TAG, the transition of Mountain Nur has been the highest polymer striped reinforced soil wall with the height of 29.6 m. The implementations of retaining wall and the bridge abutment are still proceeding on the Black sea Coast Road at the junction of Araklı-İyidere.
With this system which had been on implementation since 1986, over 150,000 m 2 wall is constructed. The projects have been implemented in our country until today can be founded in the list of references.