Neoloy Tough-Cells improve pavement performance, reduce maintenance, and lower costs, even under repeated aircraft loading in the most challenging soils, sites & environments.
Neoloy® Tough-Cells are the most cost-effective method to improve bearing capacity, strengthen pavements and reduce maintenance for airport operators.
The Challenge
Airports are typically located beyond city limits often on marginal, swampy and unusable land. Innovative soil stabilization solutions are required to increase load-bearing capacity and reinforce heavy-duty pavements for safe, efficient and sustainable operations of runways, aprons, hangars, cargo and parking areas.
Why Neoloy
Confidence is key to engineering design for airport pavements. Engineers need proof in the field, support by authoritative published studies and compliance with international standards. That’s why they chose Neoloy Tough-Cells solutions for soil stabilization and pavement reinforcement.
At Neoloy’s core is the Novel Polymer Alloy (NPA) with the engineering properties for heavy-duty pavements on soft soils, in accordance with ASTM and ISO geocell standards: tensile strength (>19 kN/m), dynamic stiffness (>500 MPa accelerated at 60°C) and creep resistance (<3% for project life).
Neoloy Tough-Cells validated improvement factors create a semi-rigid beam (slab) effect in the stabilized layer. Applied loads are distributed widely, reducing stress to subgrade by 50%. Neoloy’s improvement factors not only enable optimization of heavy-duty pavements at the best possible cost. Construction time can be halved, and carbon footprint reduced by up to 80%.
The Neoloy Solution
In terms of value engineering, verified Neoloy subgrade and modulus improvement factors (SIF, MIF) enable thinner pavement layers and the use of marginal and lighter infill materials. This can also reduce pavement weight by 50%. Pavement design with Neoloy increases soil bearing capacity, improves base–layer strength and reduces asphalt layer thickness. Soil replacement is either minimized or eliminated. Often Neoloy Tough-Cells are the only solution to extreme conditions where no other feasible solution exists. For example, Neoloy Tough-Cells pavement reinforcement at the Mexico City International Airport reduced settlement from 1.5 cm per month to 0 after 1.5 years (See case study)
Benefits
- Modulus improvement factor from 2-5x
- Semi-rigid slab stabilizes soils with CBR <1%
- Resistant to permanent deformation under heavy dynamic loading
- Significant saving, due to reduction in asphalt thickness of up to 30%
- Eliminate expensive and time-consuming soil replacement
- Reduce long-term maintenance, operating costs and downtime
- Use of local infill reduces environmental impact, sustainability and carbon footprint
- Suitable for soft, saturated soils, reclaimed wetlands
- Increased pavement lifepsan reduces environmental footprint
Additional Airport Solutions
The more complex the conditions, the more effective Neoloy Tough-Cell stabilization solutions are for the following applications:
- Runway Shoulders & Taxiways – improve safety zone for aircraft during taxiing, landing or take-off
- Airport Aprons – reinforced working platforms for heavy-duty, long-term performance
- Airfields & Airstrips – strengthen unpaved airfields with reliable and safe operations with minimum maintenance
- Slope Protection – create acoustic and visual berms surrounding airports
- Stormwater Drainage – channel runoff from airport pavements into retaining ponds for treatment
- Military Airfields – erect protective earth retention walls and rapidly restore damaged runways