One of the major road infrastructure projects in Colombia is the construction of the road that connects Bogota (the country’s capital) with Bunaventura (the most important port in the Colombian Pacific). This connection will be made through the construction of a dual carriageway motorway. One of the most important section of this road is the connection Ibague with municipality of Cajamarca (Capital of the department of Risaralda), where it is a planning the construction of a new road, which will complement the existing roadway.

The road in this section is on mountainous and undulating surface, derived from volcanic activity and presence the residual soil of the Ibague batholith and pyroclastic deposits (volcanic ash) interspersed with alluvial soils of great thickness.

The new road (length 33 km) requires the construction of more than 100 containments structures and expansion and stabilization works. To optimize these structures and take advantage of the cutting materials, the construction of walls in the soil reinforced with geotextile is proposed, which will generate a work platform for the new road in stable conditions.

Due to the topography of the area and the type of soil found as a foundation material. It was necessary to carry out a special study for each structure, designing more slender walls with stepping in the shoulder and vertical faces, the calculations of internal, external and global stability, were made from the particular characterization for each structure, executing analysis models in programs of limit equilibrium and finite elements, in these analyzes we had consider the variability of the filling materials for the wall in reinforced soil, starting from granular materials to very fine materials such as volcanic ash with high liquid limits and plasticity indexes.

The contribution and the choice of the type of geotextile to be used in the reinforcement of the wall, was of vital import for the different analysis of stability, such as the installation of the sub-drainage system with the inclusion of non-woven geotextiles, in order to guarantee the stability of the walls in the long term.