Centrifuge modelling of sand and sawdust embankments on peat for sustainable infrastructure development

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4. Centrifuge modelling of sand and sawdust embankments on peat for sustainable infrastructure development

Building on peatlands is a classic problem in geotechnical engineering and is a continuing concern for several countries in both the northern hemisphere and the humid tropics. Previously accepted methods to develop infrastructure across peatlands such as roads or railways typically excavated out the peat and substituted it with granular material. Such solutions, especially the alteration to drainage, can disturb peatlands, which are carbon rich ecosystems and store more carbon than the world's forests. When peat dries, the stored carbon oxidates to CO2. As a result, large amounts of greenhouses gases are released which contribute to the climate change.

More innovate solutions to build on peat, explore low-weight materials to form embankments. For example, previous research in Norway investigated a combination of sawdust and sand as embankments for rural roads. Although this work shed light on the deformation behaviour, very little is currently known about the performance during traffic loading and about the failure mechanisms of such embankments. To shed light on these knowledge gaps, a series of plain-strain centrifuge tests performed on sawdust and sand embankments on natural peat were conducted at Deltares as part of the GEOLABS project. Large block samples of intact peat were recovered from a site in Trondheim, Norway. In addition to extensive instrumentation, two colour cameras were used to capture images throughout the centrifuge tests. These images were subsequently analysed using the image analysis tool GeoPIV-RG. The effect of the natural peat on the embankment performance during both consolidation and loading and the role of a geotextile at the sawdust-peat interface are illustrated. The obtained findings provide new insight into the failure mechanisms of embankments on peat.

18th European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ECSMGE2024)

A - New developments on structural design