A highway embankment approximately 2 km in length was constructed over very soft tidal marshes in the southern coastal region of New Jersey. A design utilizing high strength geotextiles in combination with vertical drains and staged-construction resulted in significant savings to the Contractor and the New Jersey Department of Transportation. The tensile strength of one of the geotextiles is among the highest ever to be used in the U.S.A. Strain gages were attached to the high strength geotextiles to monitor their performance. The highway embankment was instrumented with piezometers, settlement platforms, and slope inclinometers. The performance of the embankment in terms of both settlement and tensile strain developed in the geotextiles was in reasonably good agreement with the design predictions.
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