Geotechnical specialists, Maccaferri has designed what is thought to be amongst the tallest reinforced earth retaining walls ever to be built in Europe, for a motorway construction project in Albania.

It is one of 30 reinforced earth retaining walls, all over 15m tall, designed by Maccaferri for the 171km long motorway which crosses the country through spectacular, mountainous terrain from the Adriatic Sea to Kosovo in the north east.

The largest wall is sited in the remote central region of the country, between the towns of Reshen and Reps. It retains over 140,000 cum of back fill and has a face area of approximately 3,500 sqm. With a wall length of 200m and height of 38m, it makes this one of the tallest reinforced earth structure of its type in Europe. It was completed on schedule in May 2009.

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Maccaferri was brought as element design partner by JV construction group, Bechtel-Enka, because of their specialist experience in reinforced earth, retraining wall construction. Maccaferri also provided supervision and construction management through its local sub-contract partner, Albania Draht.

The retaining walls are designed as hybrid reinforced earth geogrid wrap-around structures, built in conjunction with hard, stone-filled, Gabion Terramesh facings. Paralink 300 uniaxial polyester geogrid is the principal reinforcing element, sandwiched at 500mm or 1000mm vertical increments between layers of compacted back fill.

Many sections of the motorway run alternatively through large, steep embankment-fill sections and slope cuts. The availability of large quantities of rock fills generated by the slope excavations made the choice of reinforced earth embankment fills a more cost effective alternative to the construction of viaducts.

The Maccaferri/Bechtel-Enka partnership arrangement is typical of the direction Maccaferri is taking with complex international projects.

In the UK, the company has offices in Oxford, Perth, Dublin and Belfast and operates over a wide range of geotechnical and civil engineering disciplines.

Construction of the Albanian Motorway project was scheduled for completion in summer 2009.

(CD/KMcA)