Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Mechanical Concrete

Road Technology Finds Use in Marcellus Fields


Waste tires play an integral role in Mechanical Concrete, which can be used to establish road beds.
Photo Credit: Photo courtesy of Reinforced Aggregates Inc.


December 21, 2010 - After 18 months of failed road repairs in Wetzel County, Chesapeake Appalachia decided in August to try something new, green and home-grown.

The natural gas producer installed Mechanical Concrete, a construction technology developed in Morgantown.

"We put it in our heaviest traveled area and it's holding up well," said Steven Mossor, construction superintendent for Chesapeake Appalachia's Central District of northern West Virginia and southwest Pennsylvania.

Chesapeake's problem was that its intensive Marcellus Shale operation was just too much for the agricultural community's narrow, sometimes steep old roads.

"The foundation or the subgrade of the road was soft -- it was never constructed to handle the weight of the traffic that we were putting on it," Mossor said. "You could actually see the road surface rolling as trucks went by."

Repairs inconvenienced the community and the company and, worse, they didn't hold up.

Civil engineer Samuel G. Bonasso heard about Chesapeake's problems and called to say he had a solution.

Mechanical Concrete consists of cylinders -- used tires with the sidewalls removed, lying on their sides -- filled with aggregate, said Bonasso, president of Reinforced Aggregates Co. of Morgantown and inventor of the technology. {continued}

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