Peterhead

Slab lifting – Port.

Plain sailing at Peterhead.

Uretek’s expanding resins were used to stabilise a dockyard slipway in Scotland this summer to stop the settlement caused by overloading and washout of fill material.

Built in 1931, the slipway at Peterhead port was designed for Scotch Drifter fishing vessels, which were longer, narrower and considerably lighter than the vessels of today. While dock machinery had been upgraded to cope with the increased size of ships, the civil engineering side had not, and a slipway settlement of up to 80mm had occurred.

“One possibility was to put a much heavier reinforced concrete slab over the whole area and realign the rails over the slab.” said David Buchan, Senior Port Engineer at Peterhead.

“But Uretek proposed stabilising the ground by injecting expanding resins into the 3m of fill material beneath the existing slab, which has saved us a lot of money. Ripping out all the existing concrete slabs and concrete strips, carting them away and then replacing them does not come cheap. Uretek was a cost-effective solution, and was very non-intrusive. It only took two weeks to strengthen 97 linear metres, and there are almost no visible signs that they’ve been there!”

Environmental advantages were also a factor for Buchan. “No new material needs to be used. It’s just a matter of taking what’s there and making it stronger, which is much less energy intensive compared with replacing everything.”

Lifting the rails didn’t prove feasible due to the narrow width of the slabs, so following the Uretek ground strengthening the Peterhead workforce installed new individually sized timbers until rails were at the correct level.