Geogrid-reinforced road embankment over an old dump

A new road designed in the German State of Thuringia crosses an old unconsolidated waste dump area which had been in operation as an uncontrolled landfill before 1950. Analyses of the waste material showed a low content of organic components in the fill body. However, due to some chemical contamination of the fill, there was concern about the expenses which would have arisen for proper handling and deposition of the waste material and for the decontamination of the site, if a partial replacement of the waste with inert soil would have been executed. The favoured solution was to keep the waste in place and design the road embankment accordingly. For this purpose, the compressibility of the fill was determined by two large scale trial loading tests with geogrid-reinforced test embankments. The test results supported the design of the embankment which is under construction at the present time. The geogrid reinforcement was essential in reducing the total settlements and in particular in smoothing the differential settlements. For the covering abstract see ITRD E125786.