Since Saturday, June 30th 2018, the road Tskneti-Betania, west of the Georgian capital Tbilisi has been reopened for traffic. A part of the four kilometre long section had been completely destroyed three years ago after extremely heavy rainfalls caused a landslide with a volume of 1,00,000 m3. Mandated by the Caucasus Road Project Ltd., the SSF Group participated in the reconstruction of the road near Tskneti, which connects the population of this local area to Tbilisi.
SSF Ingenieure was responsible for project planning and structural engineering of a new bridge in the landslide zone; Baugeologisches Büro Bauer (BBB) was consulted for the geological-geotechnical consultation for bridge and road design.
The engineers used experiences from previously applied Building Information Modelling (BMI) to design the prestressed bridge and, in the course of the project, applied a digital 3D bridge model. One particularity was the risk of landslides in the area which meant that the best possible location in view of landslides had to be determined for the bridge. Adapted to the geological circumstances on site, the bridge has a span width of 42 metres at a radius in the ground plan of 30 metres. Already during the design of the bridge, BBB offered consulting in the fields of geotechnics and geology.
BBB is currently analysing the risks of slope movements in the landslide zone between Tskneti and the neighbouring town of Akhaldaba. They are mapping the region and developing technological protection measures as well as metrological instrumentation and surveillance tools for the slope. In a few years – based on the obtained results – the region will be provided a fully automatic early-warning system which automatically closes the road for traffic in case of a new landslide.
Drone flight over Tskneti region (Baugeologisches Büro Bauer)
Client: City of Tbilisi, Georgia
Contracting authority: Caucasus Road Project Ltd
Service period: 2017 - 2018
