Dealing with poor bearing capacity on low volume roads on peat in the Northern Periphery

Abstract

The Roadex II project is an EU funded trans-national technical co-operation between the northern European roads districts of Finland, Norway, Sweden and Scotland whose main aim is the sharing of technical information and good practice. The goal of subproject 2_5, ‘Dealing with Bearing Capacity Problems on Low Volume Roads Constructed on Peat’ was to gather together existing and past practices for dealing with bearing capacity problems for roads constructed on peat in the Partner roads districts, with particular reference to lightly trafficked roads. As part of this exercise interviews were held with practising roads and geotechnical engineers in the Partner areas to gain as full an insight as possible into their current thinking. The result of the research is a snapshot of the Partner area practices in dealing with bearing capacity problems in roads constructed over peat that covers such topics as the classification and engineering properties of peat, local field survey methods, testing, design considerations, risk management, methods of construction supplemented by local case studies. This paper gives a summary of the research carried out within the Partner areas and offers a ‘snapshot in time’ of local thinking for dealing with bearing capacity problems on low volume roads constructed on peat.