Geotextile-Bamboo fascine mattress is being used for the 3m. embankment built over 20.4 miles long swampy area within Pyin Win and Min Pyin (Rakhine state), which is part of highway linked Yangon and Kyaukphyu . The swampy area consists of 6m. very soft bluish grey clayey silt with decayed wood underlain by soft and medium clayey silt of 15m. and 12m. Depth, respectively both with traces of tine sand and peat. The borrowed material for the embankment is clayey silt sand, which can be completed on December 2004 for access to the in-tended seaport. About 11 miles has been done using the technique with TS50 Polyfelt and GP250 Confelt needle-punched nonwoven geotextile. Polyfelt did preliminary design for the section of geotextile. Recorded settlement of the embankment reaches to around 0.45 inches in 5 months.

With the technique, heavy construction equipments were able to operate with minimal heave reported. The use of bamboo allows the placement and seaming of geotextile making it as a good working platform even on a very soft and poor sub grade condition. The bamboo also enhances the bearing capacity as mentioned in one paper by Yusuf et al (1989). It serves as reinforcement at the base of the fill by providing bending and tensile resistances but only in just limited service period for maximum of 5 years due to decomposition. With geotextile, it serves as separator to prevent fill mixing with the soft deposits and causing remolding and excessive heave. Intermixing of the fill and soft deposit will also result to loss of mechanical properties of the fill and savings of fill up to 400% compared to conventional filling of embankment. The geotextile enables rapid dissipation of pore water pressure.