Hong Kong Airport Expansion Project

Upon completion of the Hong Kong Airport expansion project, it will be able to serve 30 million additional passengers annually.

The 20-billion USD airport expansion project essentially consists of the reclamation of 650 hectares of land north of the existing Hong Kong airport island, building a 3.8-km long new runway with supporting taxiway systems and constructing a new runway passenger building.

The Hong Kong Airport expansion project, currently underway, involves major land reclamation works. These include constructing soil-cement columns using the Deep Cement Mixing (DCM) method. To evaluate the mechanical properties of these newly constructed columns, pressuremeter testing was undertaken.

Non-dredge methods, including the DCM, are used for reclamation. The DCM method consists in injecting and mixing cement into columns of the soft mud below a sand capping layer to increase its strength and stiffness and allow land formation above. This method was selected for minimizing environmental impacts.

One technique used for evaluating the mechanical properties of these soil-cement columns is to carry out pressuremeter tests. These tests consist of introducing an expandable cylindrical probe into the pre-drilled columns and loading these up to failure. These tests provide information on both the stiffness (shear modulus) and the strength of the columns, and this is under in-situ conditions.

The results from these tests can be used in conjunction with data from other types of tests for controlling the quality of the columns, and for predicting their future behavior when loaded. Roctest provided the PROBEX pressuremeter and training to carry out these tests.

Read more case studies from Roctest.

Hong Kong Airport Expansion Project

Search Roctest

Searching...