Warren Schlatter, county engineer for Defiance County, Ohio, recalls his staff’s initial reaction when Michael Adams, Federal Highways Administration research geotechnical engineer, told them about using geosynthetic-reinforced soil technology to replace bridge abutments faster and cheaper. “We were a bit skeptical,” he says. “Could our crews do it? Would it work?” It has. Since 2005, Schlatter’s crews have built almost 20 structures.
“He had faith in us,” says Adams, who since the 1990s has been working on what now is FHWA’s GRS Integrated Bridge System program. It has been a long struggle to get conservative engineers to accept the technology, but “it’s a fight that’s worth it.” The concept is simple: alternate local soil with sheets of geotextiles to create a composite-acting material, contained by concrete blocks. “The more I investigated it, the more it impressed me,” Adams says. “Every time we did experiments, it exceeded our expectations.”