With an area of 1,727,000 square kilometres, Queensland is the second largest state in Australia. Queensland is nearly five times the size of Japan, seven times the size of Great Britain, and two and a half times the size of Texas.
With a mountain range running the full length of the state the climate can be described as "Wet" and "Dry". Approximately one third of the central portion is comprised of a soil type described as vertosols.
Vertosols are the most common soil in Queenslandcharacteristics include:
brown, grey or black soils which crack open when dry they commonly form hummocky relief called gilgai very high-soil fertilityability to supply plant nutrients large water-holding capacity.
These soils are the cracking clay soils of the Darling Downs and Central Highlands. A large belt of grey and brown Vertosols also run from the New South Wales border to Charters Towers. Dry they bake like bricks. Wet the become unable to bear loads.
Since 2016 Quantum Ground Stabilisation Pty Ltd (QGS) have associated with the University of the Sunshine Coast and Pavement Management Services Pty Ltd to research the properties of the Consolid group of products, through laboratory and field trials, using final year Engineering (honours) students. This was done in order to understand the efficacy of the products to improve (in situ) bearing capacity and all-weather accessibility of Vertosols in Road, Rail and Hard standing (Wind and Solar farms) projects.
In 2019 QGS undertook accreditation throughout Australia under the "Transport Infrastructure Product Evaluation Schemes (TIPES) process a 4 year evaluation of the laboratory and field behaviour of the system.
This paper describes the results of the four-year University trials and compares the outcomes with the requirements being undertaken through the TIPES investigation
