Typical cut and fill operations on project site Problem: The highest peak in the UAE is Al Jais, located in the Northern Emirate of Ras AL-Khaimah, 25 Km away from the main town. Al Jais is a small community, but being 10o cooler than the main cities in the UAE, the project developers believed it could be a viable tourist destination. Accordingly, a tourist resort is planned at Al Jais, and in later stages, there is the ambition to developing further hotels, ski slopes, a golf course and associated cable cars. The proposed development consists of 36km of new road rising to 1700m. The construction in this mountainous area required extensive cut and fill earthworks; many sections run alternately through large steep embankment fill sections and slope cuts with retaining structures. Between Ch20+350 and Ch20+575 a near-vertical structure was required reaching a maximum height of 32m to retain the new road. Furthermore, this site receives occasional rainfall & snowfall, during which flash floods are common which have washed-out entire roads and embankments. Therefore, the tall retaining structure solution had to be free draining to limit the build up of water pressures behind it. Solution: Maccaferri was awarded the contract for the design, supply and construction supervision support of the retaining walls. From the range of solutions offered, the “ParaMesh” system was selected as it offered significant advantages to this mountain road project. “ParaMesh” is a composite soil reinforcement system featuring two types of soil reinforcement: • Terramesh® System - A steel wire double-twist mesh gabion fascia unit with an integral geogrid soil reinforcement to prevent sloughing failure of wall face • ParaLink 300 - A unique high strength polyester geogrid (Primary reinforcement) placed in layers with vertical spacing varying from 1m (at wall bottom) to 2m (at wall top). Client: PWD, RAS AL KHAIMAH Main contractor: GENERAL MECHANIC COMPANY Consultant: HALCROW Designer: MACCAFERRI MIDDLE EAST Products used:_

Cross section of structure at highest point Installation of geotextile at back of Terramesh unit Maccaferri Middle East supported the scheme designer, Halcrow with the design of the soil reinforcement structure, using the MacSTARs W design software. The total face area of the wall is 3,670m2, ranging from 5-32m high. A geotextile was detailed to separation the native soil and structural backfill materials. Compaction of backfill onto Paralink geogrid reinforcement Being deep valleys, construction access at the toe of the wall was challenging and hence progress of the ParaMesh wall was initially...