Pudsey Road Riverbank Restoration, Leeds

Project Overview

A 3.5m high road embankment affected by scouring at the toe and exacerbated by 2015 floods noting the site is located within Flood Zone 3 (High Risk). This resulted in some shallow sliding of the bank face inducing cracks in the adjacent footway and bus lay-by. Furthermore, a potential deep seated failure could compromise the safety of the road users above.

Solution

Given the site constraints a sheet piling solution driven to 8m depth had been favoured as a permanent solution. In the interim, Leeds City Council contacted Platipus Anchors for a temporary solution. Platipus Geotechnical Team reviewed the project details and offered the specified temporary solution but also proposed an alternative 120 year design solution making sheet piling redundant. Leeds City Council approved Platipus’ Indemnified Design and remediation work began. The proposed hybrid design was executed in two phases. First, a top-down construction methodology secured the bank with anchors installed to 5m depth. In the second phase, a bottom-up construction entailed building the bank face starting with reno mattress lining at the toe followed by two lifts of rock filled gabion baskets and then placing 7 layers of stone filled geocells. The gabion baskets and geocells were tied to the bank by coupling up with the anchor and load plates terminating within the baskets and geocells. Finally, geocells were filled with seeded topsoil promoting a green and aesthetically pleasing view.