H-1 Shoulder Widening

The H-1 Freeway in Oahu is the busiest roadway in the state of Hawaii. In 2019, Hawaii Department of Transportation completed improvements to H-1 through Pearl City, about ten miles northwest of Honolulu. The roadway surface was replaced with new pavement, and the shoulder lanes were widened. Two Reinforced Earth® mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls were installed along the highway on the existing slope to widen the road.

Both walls are 10 feet tall from foundation to roadway grade. Each wall added a length of highway shoulder about 500 feet long. The walls were built using concrete panel facing, steel soil reinforcements, and low-density cellular concrete (LDCC) for backfill.

The existing foundation had bearing and settlement limitations. Even though the proposed walls were not significantly tall, a new MSE wall filling in the existing slope using granular soil or crushed stone backfill material would create too heavy of a new load for the foundation. Either the wall volume would have to be below a certain weight, or else the foundation would need improvement prior to installation of the wall.

To optimize project schedule and cost, the contractor considered factors such as the size of the walls, material availability, and installation speed. RECo’s engineering department did a calculation to show that the weight of the MSE wall volume with LDCC would be less than the original weight on the foundation with the original slope, resolving the bearing and settlement issues. Ultimately, the lightweight backfill option was chosen, using Cell-Crete’s LDCC. The material had a unit weight of 36 lb per cubic-feet, which is about 70% lighter in weight than typical select granular backfill.

The use of low-density cellular concrete for MSE backfill is becoming more common across the country as a solution for weak foundations, or even simply for project constructability. In the case of the H-1 Freeway widening, it proved to be the best alternative to produce a new lightweight embankment with the strength to carry the highest volume of traffic in Hawaii.