Road structure – process – or apparatus – Pavement – Modules or blocks
Patent
1998-09-25
2000-07-18
Lillis, Eileen Dunn
Road structure, process, or apparatus
Pavement
Modules or blocks
404 34, 404 35, 404 36, 525913, 403 52, 403 65, 403375, E01C 500, E01C 518, E01C 520, F16B 700
Patent
active
060897848
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to ground-reinforcement panels, and multi-panel, ground-decking arrays incorporating them.
There is a general requirement for temporary pathways, roadways, hard-standing areas and the like which has long been recognized. Perhaps there are other and even earlier instances, but one which comes to mind is the military need to be able quickly to construct adequate roadways, airfield runways or landing grounds even upon virgin ground. It is certainly more than fifty years since the British Army adopted pierced steel planking (so-called "PSP") for this kind of purpose, and it is possibly used to this day--but at best it is not an easy material to handle even when new and being laid for the first time, while its subsequent recovery and re-use is made at least difficult and quite often essentially impossible by the fact that heavy vehicular traffic passing over PSP deforms and otherwise damages it, often to a degree such that it is easier to discard rather than to re-use it.
When essentially new and undeformed, PSP can be supplied and applied to the ground surface in a continuous roll, but the more it is used (and thus the more it becomes deformed) the less chance there is that it can ever be recovered by simply rolling it up again.
It is also known to employ large stretches of relatively heavy-duty welded steel rod mesh, and this perhaps is less objectionable to handle. Even so, if subjected to heavy traffic this also becomes bowed or otherwise deformed--so that in any event there remains a problem of recovery. Anyway it is generally-speaking laid in successive sheets (which are overlapped with each other before being secured together and/or to the ground in order to form a roadway) so that laying this kind of ground reinforcement is basically a labour-intensive task which has to be performed manually rather than by simply unrolling the surface-reinforcing material onto the surface of the ground, as obviously would be desirable for high-speed operations.
At this point it is perhaps appropriate to say that while the need for ground-reinforcement has been described above in a military context, there are of course similar situations encountered in peacetime as well as in war, for instance in the heavy civil construction industry, where very major work-sites are created by ground-excavation, ground-filling and ground-levelling operations, and it is necessary for long periods of many months or even years for earth-working and other heavy machinery to be moved around the work-site.
Nor indeed are these military and civil engineering contexts the only ones where temporary (or even semi-permanent) ground-reinforcement systems are needed. Wherever there is to be a great but short-lived congregation of people (and the vehicles in which they arrive and leave) the same kind of problem is liable to be encountered, and of course especially during periods of the year, e.g. Winter, when the ground becomes saturated with water and thereby loses its full load-bearing capacity. This kind of short-lived need for hard-standing may arise on the occasion of things such as horse-race meetings and other open-air sporting events, or indeed at gatherings such as agricultural shows and so on.
Whatever the event, if it is to be held in the open air with a possibility of wet weather there is a requirement (at present more or less unfulfilled) for a ground-reinforcement system which:
(a) can be quickly and economically laid down before the event;
(b) will during laying accommodate itself reasonably adequately to undulations in the underlying terrain;
(c) will after it has been laid withstand the maltreatment it receives not only from large crowds of people but also from the vehicles in which they arrive and leave;
(d) will when laid restrict the damage suffered by the underlying terrain, e.g. a grass sward when shut out from light and rain for the period of the event; and
(e) can after the event be recovered (for re-use on another occasion) more or less as speedily and economically as it was first laid down.
So far as is
REFERENCES:
patent: 3500606 (1970-03-01), Wharmby
patent: 4289818 (1981-09-01), Casamayor
patent: 4373306 (1983-02-01), Rech
patent: 5836125 (1998-11-01), Regina
Addie Raymond
Lillis Eileen Dunn
LandOfFree
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