Challenges in the Construction of Highways in the Brazilian Amazonia Environment: Part I – Identification of Engineering Problems

Abstract

The construction of highways in the Brazilian Amazonia Region is always problematic, mainly because it involves environmental obstacles but also technical, economic, and natural challenges. The environmental issues concern the deforestation of the virgin forest and the resulting environmental impacts. The technical ones are related to the natural subgrade, formed by the geologically young alluvial soils that are plastic, being highly compressible or expansive, present in the vast Amazon Basin, whereas the economic issues refer to the final costs of inputs for the construction of the layers of the highway since granular soils and stony materials are located in limited areas that are distant from the work sites, given the geographic immensity of the Brazilian Amazonia. There is also the cost of purging low-bearing capacity soil from the natural subgrade of the highway. Added to all this are the issues of nature, which involve high annual rainfall and the hydrological regime of river flooding and ebbing, which induce the saturation of the pavement layers and the loss of the global geotechnical stability of the compacted earth embankment, respectively. This work points out the Engineering difficulties to be faced in road infrastructure works in the Brazilian Amazon.