» NKFI Funds

Name of the beneficiary: SYCONS Tanácsadó, épitőipari fővállalkozó, kivitelező és tervező Kft.

Project title: Stabilization of landslides and ground surface movements - technology and tool development at Sycons Kft.

Amount of subsidy: 168,811,457 HUF

Rate of subsidy: 60.25%

Planned end date: 30 November 2018

Project identification number:KFI_16-1-2016-0228

Presentation of the project:

Root causes of landslides and embankment collapses are, in most of the cases, the groundwater or aquifer water conditions of the moving soil mass, and as a consequence, changes of the internal physical parameters of the soil. The volume of the moving soil is often too important to stop the movement using engineering structures, or the construction of such structures would imply unrealistically high costs.

The process currently used by Sycons Kft. eliminates the most important root cause of the movements: it consists of the drainage and controlled evacuation of the groundwater volume accumulated and flowing in the soil mass behind the shear surface, still stationary. Doing so, groundwater level behind the shear surface can be lowered to a level where groundwater under pressure is no more present in the aquiferous layers, and as a result, sliding forces will be lower than the frictional force of the sliding surface. Application of this technology is limited by the defined installation depth, as well as the “necessity” of a receiving side. The embankment to be stabilized is often high (40-60 m), and the aquiferous layer to be drained is also located in this depth, or even deeper.

The objective of the present research and development project is to create an equipment and a technology which will eliminate these limits, thus, which allows the installation of deep drains longer than 100 m on embankments higher than 25 m, even in unfavorable excavation soil classes (sand, fine sand, silt), even in cases where only the “launch side” is available.