The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) Bridge Maintenance Division 6 had a major erosion problem at the bridge piles underneath I-95 at Highway 87 in Cumberland County, N.C. The bridge deck above was leaking water at the joint, cascading down and eroding the slope that protects the concrete bridge piles. They were constantly repairing this area, so they decided to use Concrete Cloth (CC) to prevent further erosion and limit maintenance.
Traditionally, a thin, poured concrete slab called slope paving or riprap placed on top of a geotextile to protect the existing slope would have been installed. Vegetating the slope was not an option; because of the low sunlight conditions vegetation would not get established.
NCDOT chose to install Concrete Cloth geosynthetic cementitious composite mats (GCCM) as an alternate to riprap. Using Concrete Cloth materials allowed NCDOT to utilize their own maintenance crew and avoided having to use any large equipment in order to protect the slope. The Concrete Cloth material was keyed into an anchor trench on the perimeter of the slope protection and staked down with 12-in. pins with washers around the circumference of the piers. Concrete Cloth GCCM was easy to cut with simple hand tools around the circular piles. This area was later grouted. The installation was completed in approximately two hours.
