47 / 56
September 2016
MODERN MINING
45
Fibertex paving fabric used to
upgrade roads to Zambian mine
The Fibertex range of geotextiles, which is designed especially for civil engineer-
ing, mining and road construction and maintenance projects, includes a paving
fabric – Fibertex AM-2. This paving fabric has been used in a recent road surfacing
project in Zambia.
“In order to gain access to one of the world’s largest copper mines at Kalumbila
on Zambia’s Copperbelt, a network of dirt roads off the main road between
Solwezi and Lumwana needed to be constructed. The new mine is situated in a
remote location, which meant all road building materials had to be transported
over long distances and at great cost,” says Chris Powell of Fibertex South Africa.
“High seasonal rainfall in this region has a detrimental effect on roads, substan-
tially increasing maintenance requirements.
“To lower the costly routine maintenance intervals on these roads, they
were later upgraded to a surfaced standard, using Fibertex AM-2 paving fabric.
Fibertex AM-2, is a flexible needle-punched nonwoven fabric, with added ther-
mal bonding on one side only. The purpose of this pre-compressed 140 g/m²
polypropylene (PP) bitumen-saturated paving fabric is to prevent the ingress of
surface water into the selected layers of the road prism, thereby reducing the
bearing capacity of these layers.
“This membrane also acts as a Stress Absorbing Membrane Interlayer (SAMI)
to prevent surface stress cracking by absorbing stresses imposed by differential
loads. This paving fabric also prevents the propagation of stress cracks from lower
surface layers (older asphalt or chip seal layers) in the case of a road reseal.”
By including Fibertex AM-2 in the reseal design, the formation of stress cracks
and eventual pothole formation is prevented, thus extending the service life of
the road surface.
Additionally, when using Fibertex F-grade geotextiles in a separation applica-
tion below the layer works of the road prism, the road design can be altered to
include less of the costly imported engineered fill. This reduces the thickness of
the selected layers, resulting in a more cost-effective design.
Without the use of a separation fabric in weak subgrade conditions, intermix-
ing of engineered aggregate into the weak subgrade could occur. As a result, the
bearing capacity of the base course is reduced, which could lead to base course
failure of the road.
The Fibertex AM-2 system can be applied mechanically for large volume
installations, as well as manually in cases where narrow width installations are
required.
Chris Powell, Fibertex South Africa, tel (+27 31) 736-7100
PRODUCT News
Fibertex AM-2 paving fabric has been used in a recent road surfacing project in Zambia.