The Wyoming Department of Transportation will soon conclude a year’s worth of repairs, which includes the use of lightweight aggregate made of glass diverted from a landfill, on a collapsed highway.
On June 6, 2024, a section of Highway 22 in the northwestern part of the state that runs over the historic Teton Pass developed a large crack across both lanes. Two days later, part of the road slid down the mountain as crews were working to construct a detour. No one was injured.
Wyoming Highway 22's failure on June 8, 2024.Wyoming DOT
During work on the Teton Pass Big Fill Slide repair project, Aero Aggregates’ foamed-glass material was deployed to reconstruct a 100-foot-high embankment with incorporated drains. The structure is the tallest foamed-glass aggregate slope stabilization in the U.S., according to Aero. The aggregate was converted at the company’s Dunnellon, Florida, facility from glass diverted from a landfill.
The material uses a dry-foam manufacturing process and has the comparable strength of traditional stone aggregate but is 85% lighter. The closed-cell, foamed-glass aggregate’s notable flow rate was another advantage. “The product not only allowed continuous placement, but it was also less susceptible to weather conditions, decreased the weight of mass exerting forces on the existing material below the embankment and was ecologically friendly for the surrounding national forest,” said Pete Schexnayder, senior project manager for general contractor Ames Construction.
Aero Aggregates delivered about 60,000 cubic yards of the material for the project. The material’s lighter weight also allowed delivery to take fewer truck runs compared to traditional fill.
The Aero Aggregates foamed-glass material is currently approved by 25 state DOTs.
