FAE Stories - Switzerland

An FAE MTH-225 at work in Switzerland

Building a road embankment and stabilizing the soil

In Pratteln, near Basel, the large Dammbau Zurlindengrube Ost, Pratteln construction site, opened for the Canton of Basel in the fall of 2021, closed this past fall. The purpose of the site: to build a road embankment as the foundation for the Netzibodenstrasse, an artery that runs along the southern bank of the Reno River, plus the related work to adapt the surrounding area.

The company that did the soil stabilization work is Marti AG — specializing in civil engineering and industrial work as well as road construction, with around 6,000 employees, headquartered in Moosseedorf, and with three more branches in Switzerland. To do the job, Marti AG Basel paired the FAE MTH 225 it purchased from the importer AEBI Suisse with a Fendt 939 tractor.

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The construction site for building the embankment in Pratteln required building a large storage area for the material being processed, which was located near Netzibodenstrasse. The filling material had very specific characteristics, since it had to have the right properties in terms of strength (slope stability) and deformation behavior (settling and road settling differences) to make it possible to then build the road.

Preliminary static surveys showed that the existing material needed to be worked to make it stable and compact. To that end, it was therefore necessary to pack down and stabilize the material with hydraulic binders (lime and cement) and the help of the MTH 225.

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Marti AG Basel did the following work:

  • Moving the excavated earth
  • Layering and precompaction
  • Laying the binder
  • Tilling soil with a soil stabilizer
  • Compaction with a compacting roller
  • Creating a plan for the next stage
  • Making a model of the structure (embankments)
  • Technical control of the parameters indicated (compaction, deformation modulus)
  • Documentation
  • Creating a 3D model for machine testing

We excavated and moved around 35,000 m³ of mostly rocky, clayey soil,” recalls Rainer Lang, Head of Marti AG’s Construction Division, “and we worked an area of about 72,000 m². With the FAE MTH multitask, we stabilized layers of earth around 40 cm, using about 3,600 tons of binder. In total, for each day of work, we had maximum production of about 800 m³ and max fuel consumption of about 70 l/h,” Lang concludes.

Variable geometry is a unique solution on the market and is especially suitable for processing soil with a lot of large stones (around 30 cm in diameter),” adds Daniel Bertagnolli, Area Manager for FAE Construction Europe. “For this Swiss construction site, it showed that it can also process very clayey soil with a lot of stones and crush them down to a grain size of 0-45/100 mm, perfect for uniform compaction. Going over it with the FAE MTH  225 therefore makes the stones in the ground smaller and effectively stabilizes the soil with a single machine. This gives us a huge advantage compared to pure tillers and stabilizers that are towed or self-propelled, which forces these two processes to be two separate activities. Another important advantage is also the ability to use less binder because of the fine grain size the crusher produces."

For more information: MTH

Grazie a: martiag.ch - aebisuisse.ch

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