RoadPacker Plus Introduction

Substantial World Wide Cost Savings With Alternative Road Construction Methods

Great concern has been expressed for some considerable time in both the public and private sectors of Governments and Municipalities the world over, concerning the deteriorating condition of vital road networks due to the lack of funding availability.

Each year, the declining situation accelerates due to costly preventive maintenance not being carried out. Various interest groups that include special Government appointed committees are continuously examining new or alternative road construction technology to identify more cost-effective construction and maintenance methods, so this trend can be halted and reversed. The use of chemical soil stabilisation is now seriously under consideration and many roads have been built and evaluated during the last ten years with extremely encouraging results.

Several Governments worldwide have instructed their bureau of standards to conduct research into new testing procedures that would provide provincial and private road construction engineers and consultants, with an effective means of assessing in advance the extent to which chemical stabilisation will improve the mechanical properties of their road materials. Once these new testing procedures have been identified and published, there will undoubtedly be a major swing towards the use of chemical stabilisation due to the huge benefits inherent in the possibility of using insitu soils (which would otherwise be unsuitable and require transporting away to waste). Simultaneously, the need to import expensive better gravels to replace unsuitable materials, would be minimised.

Projections show that millions of dollars would be saved annually in terms of reduced maintenance costs not only from a reconstruction point of view, but also from a reduced need for routine grading and watering of gravelled roads. Certain tests carried out over a twelve month period have revealed that the chemically stabilised sections did not require any routine grading, whereas identical but untreated sections of the same roads, required grading at least once or twice per month.

Ionic Soil Stabilisation has been promoted in many third world countries for many years using Sulphonated Petroleum Products ( SPP's) with documented levels of success. It was originally introduced from the United States in the early 1960's to South Africa, South America and many other countries over the next twenty years. Originally it was used on a small number of secondary roads where little or no money was available for proper concrete or asphalt roads. During the past twenty years and in particular the last ten years, ionic soil stabilisation has become accepted as an alternative method of road construction in many countries.

To date, thousands of kilometres of roads throughout the world have been successfully treated, some for private end users, and others for provincial, regional and municipal bodies where the engineers concerned have monitored and kept effective records on performance.

In a project carried out for Pretoria City Council in South Africa and monitored by CSIR, Ionic Soil Stabilisation products were used to treat a totally unacceptable high clay soil with a Plasticity Index (P.I.) of between 25 and 48 and a soaked California Bearing Ratio ( C.B.R. ) of 4. After a period of six months a sample removed from the treated layer was found to have a P.I. of 5 and tests conducted in situ showed the C.B.R. value to be 96. *

Results of both the field and laboratory test, clearly showed that the Ionic Soil Stabilisation products greatly affected the treated materials. The laboratory tests showed that the increase found in layer strength was not only due to compaction, but also due to improvement of material properties such as P.I., grading modules and linear shrinkage.

In recent years, (over the last fifteen or so) Ionic Soil Stabilisation products have been successfully introduced into countries such as Australia, Papua New Guinea, China, The Philippines, Singapore and many other Asian countries together with Europe and South America. It is also being used throughout the U.S.A. and more recently Canada.

Sulphonated Petroleum Products are tried and proven in enough countries in the world and under varying adverse climatic conditions, such as extreme heat and equally extreme cold and frost, to be considered as an alternative cost-effective method of road construction for national highways, secondary and feeder roads.

* These statistics were taken from a technical paper delivered by W.J.vdM Steyn who was a Snr. Engineer with the Division of Roads and Transport Technology CSIR South Africa at the 2nd. African Young Geo Technical Engineers Conference in Stellenbosch South Africa.

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