A2/M2 WIDENING: THE USE OF GEOSYNTHETICS FOR REINFORCED SLOPES

The widening of the A2/M2 trunk road/motorway in north Kent runs from Cobham at the west end across the River Medway on a new bridge to junction 4 of the M2 south of Chatham. The work involved constructing a new 4 lane carriageway alongside the existing 2 lane dual carriageway, the new carriageway carries the west bound traffic. The space available for construction was restricted in a narrow corridor in which the new high speed Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) has also been constructed. The new works included nine geogrid reinforced soil slopes with wrap around green face slopes with finished heights up to 16m. This paper describes the selection of materials, the design and construction of these reinforced slopes. For the covering abstract see ITRD E117244.