Propex
Mitigating Runway Closure with a Low Carbon Solution at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport
- This article first appeared in the Airport Industry-News magazine Issue 1 2021.
Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, is one of the world’s busiest airports, accommodating 100 million passengers and more than 950,000 flights per year.
Heavy rainfall was causing severe erosion and slope failure along the fifth runway. If not corrected, the increasing erosion and surficial failures could have grown to create a globally unstable slope. It is critical to stabilise slopes and landscapes adjacent to airport pavements to mitigate closures of taxiways and runways due to landslides and erosion. The airport wanted a resilient solution that would stabilise the slope, mitigate erosion, and provide a vegetated outcome that would be easy to maintain.
More than 836 square metres of slope needed to be stabilised with a geotechnically engineered solution to provide long-term surficial stability against a 1.2 metre failure. To meet this criterion, ARMORMAX® was selected. The system is composed of Engineered Earth Anchors that are designed and tested for compatibility and performance with our High Performance Turf Reinforcement Mats (HPTRM) to increase slope stability for up to 75 years.
One challenge of this project was that all work had to be completed within the airport’s aircraft movement area (AMA). The close proximity to an active runway meant that machines and large equipment could not be used above the slope. Traditional hard armouring such as rock riprap and concrete, requires large trucks and multiple machines. In contrast, the equipment used to install ARMORMAX is compact and minimal. This enabled the project team to easily execute the installation.
