Summary. A summary of the expert article from the society's 35th anniversary volume. The full article is available to download below.
The author, Ksenija Štern, points out that good geotechnical solutions are often invisible, even though they demand considerable knowledge and experience. Building motorways, expressways and railways across the varied terrain of northeastern Slovenia means deep cuttings, high embankments, viaducts and water crossings, while for the geotechnical engineer it means problems of stability, bearing capacity, deformation and the placement of soils.
The article covers the sections from Šentilj to Gruškovje and from Dragučova to Pince, the motorway across the Drava plain, and the railway between Puconci and Hodoš. It deals in particular with load tests on bored piles at the bridges over the Mura and the Drava in 2000, the building of high embankments on weak soils in the Pesnica valley, and deep cuttings in Miocene marls, where monitoring warned of a local failure at Dragučova.
The final part is devoted to the workability of marls, which at first glance are an excellent embankment material but are volumetrically unstable, since they swell in water and disintegrate. They must be placed at suitable moisture and saturation, on a drainage blanket, and high embankments should be left to rest for at least six months.
