Keystone® Retaining wall solves warehouse issue for Sydney Business Park

The project

Horsley Drive Business Park is a newly-established industrial estate in Western Sydney. Its focus is on both business efficiency and the quality of the surrounding environment.

Whilst the location is highly convenient to many Sydney-based customer markets, the final site and subsequent construction of warehouse facilities necessitated a proven, aesthetically pleasing retaining structure. The retaining wall needed to be consistent with the quality of this modern warehouse and distribution area and its environmental focus.

Our solution

A soil reinforced wall consisting of a soil reinforcement geogrid and a concrete block facing system was selected as the ideal solution.

ACEGrid® is a geogrid with excellent reinforcement properties, and when connected to a concrete block facing system known as Keystone®, provided the perfect solution for this high retaining wall.

The finished Keystone® wall measured up to 6m in height with a 3m gabion wall at the base. The wall was constructed by the contractor with a total finished wall area in excess of 1500m2.

About ACEGrid® uniaxial polyester geogrid

ACEGrid® is an engineered polyester geogrid that has exceptionally high strength characteristics at low levels of strain. The product is coated with an additional polymer that provides high resistance to long term degradation and the effects of mechanical damage during grid placement.

ACEGrid® polyester geogrid has minimal post-construction strain issues and allows a wall to maintain constructed shape over a design life of 100+ years.

The ACEGrid® polyester geogrid is extremely easy to place and will not ‘recoil’ like some competitor geogrids (which increases installation costs).

In this project, ACEGrid® geogrids were used behind a masonry dry-stacked unit, called Keystone® Compac® blocks. The wall design incorporates a reinforced soil mass, whereby the soil is compacted between layers of geogrid. The geogrid provides shear strength to the compacted select fill, as well as connection strength to the face block.

Thorough wall analyses of internal, external and global stability checks are required to determine the reinforced soil block dimension (plus geogrid tail length, grade and spacing).

To add to the natural landscape of the site, a Link® gabion mass gravity wall was constructed below the Keystone® reinforced soil wall. This fully permeable gabion structure blends into the natural environment and can be additionally coated to provide maximum longevity.