The sustainable approach to designing a noise bund

Overview

The Paragon Park project consisted of constructing a 9.5m high visual and acoustic bund, which was 450m in length, between a new housing development and a metal recycling facility located in Coventry. One challenging aspect of the project was the soil conditions and the fill material, where contaminated site-won material was to be considered to reduce the overall cost and meet the sustainable specifications of the project. The face of the bund was also a challenge as the client wanted an aesthetic face, therefore the team had to consider what possible solutions could be installed on the steep 70-degree face. 

Fundamentally important to achieving the bund’s sustainability credentials and commercial viability, was that the bund had to be constructed from approximately 80,000m3 of fill, imported under licence by Dunton Environmental. The hydro-carbon and heavy metal contaminated fill, imported from multiple sites, was treated and graded on site prior to its re-use in the earth bund.

The bund was built on top of a well-prepared and compacted started layer, and the site-won material was used for the build-up of the bund with multiple layers of geogrid at various lengths to reduce the material cost. A ‘rivel mesh’ facing system was incorporated within the solution to achieve the bunds required 70-degree face geometry. The backfill soil was retained at the face by using an erosion control mat and geogrid wraparound as each layer was constructed. This was repeated until the total height of 9.5m was achieved. The reinforced bund was designed in accordance with BS8006:2010 for internal stability and Eurocode 7 for external stability.

This is a joint event with the UK chapter of the International Geosynthetics Society.

Please note refreshments will be available from 17.30. The presentation will begin at 18.00.