Road closures due to road repairs often make life difficult for us drivers and for everyone involved in repairing them. SAINT-GOBAIN ADFORS CZ offers reinforcing geogrids as a solution to extend the life of asphalt pavements. Repairs using reinforcement prolong the asphalt layers’ lifetime by up to three times and reduce future maintenance costs by up to 50%.
The application of geogrids is fast and, thanks to the extended time between maintenance and repairs, contributes to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions into the air. SAINT-GOBAIN ADFORS CZ manufactures fibreglass geogrids in Litomyšl, East Bohemia, and distributes them throughout Europe and other parts of the world. One of the latest installations of a new type of geogrid was carried out in the remote Faroe Islands.
Geogrids for any type of surface
The ADFORS GlasGrid® product line offers several types of reinforcing geogrids that prevent cracking. Self-adhesive geogrids are the best solution for application on existing or new surfaces, while composite geogrids are a suitable alternative for milled surfaces.
For local repairs of damaged parts of asphalt layers, such as potholes, joints, excavations and areas around manhole covers, a reinforcement with non-woven fabric is usually laid on a milled surface. Critical places for crack penetration are the longitudinal and transverse joints of cement-concrete pavements, surface joints in the repair of non-bearing shoulders, asphalt layers exposed to cracks propagating from the underlying layers, asphalt working joints or defects in structural layers.
SAINT-GOBAIN ADFORS CZ geogrids meet the required alkaline resistance and are therefore also suitable for cement-concrete surfaces.
GlasGrid® Rapid to speed up road repairs
A special product that has received a lot of attention recently is GlasGrid® Rapid, which has been developed for rapid area-wide and local repairs of cracks and potholes in the road. This special composite reinforcement system consists of a polymer-coated fibreglass mesh and a non-woven fabric with a modified asphalt backing. The asphalt layer is protected by a film and sand is applied to the surface of Rapid.
Rapid significantly speeds up road reconstruction because the built-in self-adhesive asphalt layer eliminates the need for a sprayed binder. Rapid not only ensures perfect adhesion to the surface, but also the required bonding of the surfaces. This solution is particularly suitable for road administration and maintenance bodies, where their work crews can install the geogrid themselves and no longer need to order a contractor to install it.
The use of Rapid is simple – after laying the reinforcement on the road, the film protecting the asphalt layer is removed, the geogrid is rolled and then asphalted. Another indisputable benefit is its high adhesion to the surface, ensuring safe application without any undesirable rippling. The perfect bonding and the sand on the surface of the reinforcement eliminate the risk of Rapid sticking on the tyres of construction vehicles moving over the already laid geogrid.
Rapid can be used on all surfaces:
- Old/new asphalt surfaces
- Old/new cement-concrete surfaces
- Milled surfaces
- Combined milled and smooth surfaces
GlasGrid® Rapid on the Faroe Islands and in the Czech Republic
This new product has also been successfully used on the Faroe Islands, as mentioned in the introduction to this article, in the reconstruction of the access road and handling areas in the port of Klaksvik. There, GlasGrid® Rapid was laid on a concrete surface and a 5 cm cover layer of asphalt was applied. This composite reinforcement system significantly accelerated the surface reconstruction in the port thanks to its application without the use of sprayed binder. This reduced the number of technological processes on site, and fewer workers and machinery were required for the project.
In the Czech Republic, GlasGrid® Rapid was recently used for the reconstruction of a road in the village of Kunčina near Moravská Třebová. Here, it was a local paving job on the most heavily loaded sections. Specifically, the shoulders and culverts were newly reinforced. Within half an hour, a total of 400 m² of Rapid geogrid were laid and ready for asphalting. The simple and quick application without sprayed binder was highly praised by the staff of the Road Administration and Maintenance of the Pardubice Region, Moravská Třebová Department.
Environmental protection as SAINT-GOBAIN ADFORS priority
The manufacturer commissioned an independent Swedish company to carry out a life-cycle assessment of a typical European motorway with two different rehabilitation schemes. The study was to evaluate and quantify the positive environmental impact of GlasGrid® GG self-adhesive geogrid. Specifically, it was a comparison of two 1 km-long sections of motorway over a 30-year period. The motorway section repaired without the use of road reinforcement was compared with the southern section of the motorway maintained using GlasGrid® GG geogrids. The third-party verified lifecycle study resulted in a positive environmental impact due to the use of GlasGrid® GG reinforcements. The geogrids reduced total CO₂ emissions by almost 20% by extending the repair intervals of the road surfaces, representing the emissions of 112 return flights between Paris and New York. And we are only talking about 1km of motorway over its 30-year lifetime.
Another concrete example of a sustainable solution is the largest project in GlasGrids more than 30-year history. In 2021, ADFORS CZ supplied 540,000 m² of self-adhesive geogrid for the rehabilitation of the A1 motorway section from Chirpan to Stara Zagora in Bulgaria. The self-adhesive function of the geogrid allows application without nails and sprayed binder. This brings advantages:
- Faster pavement rehabilitation (approx. 20% less time)
- Fewer workers (approx. 50% less)
- A significant reduction in the amount of sprayed binder (approx. 60% less) during construction.
As a result, the project saved 432,000 kg of sprayed binder and extended the life of the motorway and the time between repairs.
SAINT-GOBAIN ADFORS is a fibreglass manufacturing and processing company that distributes a wide range of fabrics, including pavement reinforcements. ADFORS GlasGrid® extends pavement lifetime by up to three times. It also provides a 50% reduction in future investment costs, a 25% reduction in rutting depth and a 10% improvement in waterproofing and road drainage. Other benefits of GlasGrid® products include reduced congestion, safer roads, fast and efficient installation, flexible delivery and high-quality service.
