Displacement Cures NAICM Headache

Composed of 80 percent water and 20 percent clay, the soil of Texcoco Lake demands sophisticated engineering and architectural techniques to guarantee the airport will not sink over time. Accordingly, the runways will be constructed following the Archimedes Principle so they float and prevent compression of the soil. Likewise, a preload construction technique will be implemented to allow water to exit and thus increase the consolidation of the soil and enhance its load capacity enough to prevent substantial movements.

The area also required a significant effort for cleaning and leveling, as it was abandoned land where much of the debris from the 1985 earthquake ended up. COCONAL was the awarded contractor for this endeavor, a tender that cost almost MX$1.8 billion. Tender packages for Runways 2 and 3 include the preload and geotechnical instrumentation systems, the infrastructure, the pavement structure and visual aids. There must be geotechnics monitoring to evaluate the vertical settlement of the soil and its horizontal displacement. Airstrips 2 and 3 are currently a work-in-progress, but on completion they will measure 5km long by 60m wide.