Bituminous bank revetments in rivers and canals

In many countries Inland navigation is taking a high flight nowadays. The Increase of number, size and speed of Inland shipping calls for reconstruction of existing bank revetments and Installation of new protective works on navigable rivers and existing or newly built canals. New methods of bank protection are developed to speed up production and reduce costs at the same time by mechanisation. Asphaltmlxes are very suitable for a mechanised production, though up till recently several problems prevented its general use in the field of bank protection. The main problems orglnated from the difficulty of application under water and from the watertlghtness of the product. In Holland, where the use of asphalt mixes in hydraulic engineering is attractive not only for technical reasons, but also from an economical point of view because of the scarcences of raw materials such as stone, this was a challenge for Industry to design new asphalt mixes and application methods. BITUMARIN, a Dutch company specialising in asphalt applications in hydraulic engineering, made extensive studies also on methods of bank protection, and already developed several techniques and application methods in this field, which might be worth mentioning. In this note some observations are made on design requirements for bituminous revetments and its consequences for the actual design in practice