Discussion on earthworks

M. P. O'REILLY, Transport and Road Research Laboratory, Crowthorne Granular backfill is scarce and expensive in HSouth East England (Naish, 1989) and there is thus considerable incentive to use less traditional and more widely available materials. Chalk is one such material and is widely available in this area and an experimental reinforced earth retaining structure has been built at Paulsgrove, Hampshire, to investigate the use of soft chalk backfills (Temporal et al., 1989). Three locally available materials with saturation moisture contents up to 29% were used in the trial, which was a joint venture between Hampshire County Council, the Reinforced Earth Co. Ltd., Anda Crib Ltd., H. T. Hughes and Sons (Transport) Ltd. and the Transport and Road Research Laboratory.