SYNOPSIS

Pavements are unique structures; as these structures are designed to fail within a certain time frame. Unlike other structures which are designed to a particular load capacity, pavements are instead required to function within a particular time-frame. Geogrids have been used for decades to stabilise unbound pavement materials and improve the trafficking capacity and indirectly the pavement life.

Geogrid stabilised pavements have been shown to improve pavement life in the order of three to six times compared to pavement of equal thickness, which has obvious economical and practical benefits. This presentation provides an introduction to designing pavements incorporating stabilisation benefits and the background research used to develop our understanding of stabilisation mechanisms.


Biodata of Speakers

Speaker 1 - Mike Dobie is a geotechnical engineer, graduating in civil engineering from Bristol University (UK) and later obtaining a master’s degree in soil mechanics from Imperial College, London.  He is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (UK). Since graduating in 1973, he has worked in the field of geotechnical engineering for British consultant WS Atkins & Partners, the Delft Soil Mechanics Laboratory in the Netherlands and Singapore, and American specialist consultant Dames & Moore.  More recently he has worked for Acer Consultants (now Hyder Consultants, previously Freeman Fox & Partners), being seconded to establish the Central Soils Laboratory near Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to provide high quality soil testing for the North-South Expressway project.  Mike joined Tensar International in 1991 and currently is the Regional Manager (Asia Pacific) based in Jakarta with responsibilities for the development of design methods and software for both reinforced soil structures and mechanical stabilisation techniques. Mike lived previously in Singapore in 1983 and has been making regular visits over the last 25 years, conducting workshops and seminars in reinforced soil techniques.

Speaker 2 - Mahesa Bhawanin is a graduate from the University of Aberdeen, School of Engineering, where he obtained both his bachelors and post-graduate qualifications.

Joining the Tensar regional office in Malaysia in mid-2016 as a Design Engineer, his main responsibilities centered around design and technical support for the Asia Pacific region. Since then, the role has expanded into a business development-centric role, raising the awareness of Geosynthetic applications for the purposes of ground improvement, soil stabilisation and soil reinforcement.

His expertise lies in the design of stabilised temporary platforms, access roads for heavy plant operations in soft-ground as well pavement optimisation with empirical and mechanistic empirical design methods.