ACO civil engineering at work
10.1 Transport Projects, Issue 03, 05/2009
NATO Air Base, Schleswig
4,000 m ACO DRAIN® Monoblock at the airport in Jagel
In Germany’s most northerly state, Schleswig-
Holstein, close to the Danish border, is the
parish of Jagel. With only around 1,000 resi-
dents, it is one of Germany’s smaller paris-
hes. However, Jagel has been home to an air
force base ever since 1916, one which also
played its part in the Berlin Airlift. Since the
early 1990s the airport, which to date has
been used solely for military purposes, has
been the home of the NATO reconnaissance
squadron Number 51 “Immelmann”, which
has been deployed in Afghanistan since April
2007, using reconnaissance Tornados.
Due to its good infrastructural transport links
– located directly at the A7 motorway, the
main railway line linking Hamburg and
Copenhagen and the Kiel Canal – the civilian
shared use of the Jagel military air base, as
a central airport for the region, has been
under discussion time and time again. That
way, it could also serve business and tourism
purposes in the future.
The airport, on a site with a total area of 640
hectares including the two runways – the lat-
ter are 3,000 and 2,680 metres long and 30
and 45 metres wide respectively - offers a
starting point for extending the use of the
hitherto purely military facility.
Between April and September 2008 one of
the take-off and landing runways was exten-
sively refurbished, so a large part of the
squadron had to be relocated completely.
For the project it was not only a case of
renewing the surface layer so that, in the
future, unmanned reconnaissance drones
could take off and land. A significant element
of the refurbishment work was also the
Access road to NATO Air Base Schleswig
replacement of the out-of-date and damaged
concrete-slit channels flanking the runway to
the left and right.
The out-of-date channels were replaced by
ACO drainage channels of the type
Monoblock RD 200 V. More than 4,000
metres of this monolithic system were put in
place. The channels, of varying overall height
and developed for large-area draining, were
able to be installed with great efficiency, and
without a major deployment of personnel and
machines, due to their compact mode of
construction (low weight at a unit length of
2.00 m).
But it is not only the time-saving mode of
installation that was decisive for the decision
Continued on page 2
 to use ACO DRAIN® Monoblock drainage
channels, made of polymer concrete. Two
further arguments favoured the selection:
thanks to the mode of construction of the
channels, with their well-proven V-profile,
and the favourable hydraulic values related to
this, the surface water can be drained away
rapidly and reliably, so as to avoid aquapla-
ning. In addition, polymer concrete is a buil-
ding material both impermeable to fluids and
resistant to aggressive media, without an
additional coating: this is due to it being
composed of mineral filling materials and
reaction resin.

To effect the switchover between the various

nominal widths and overall heights, a special
version of the Monoblock type was develo-
ped for the large-area draining requirements
at Jagel air base: this makes it possible to
ACO DRAIN® Monoblock drainage channels along the take-off and landing runway
comply with the maximum throughput cross
section requirement. Apart from channels
with a throughput cross section of 303 to
703 cm² and an inflow cross section of
583 cm²/m, 2,900 metres of ACO DRAIN®
Monoblock RD 200 V channels were
installed, in 2-metre-long units, in addition to
94 units of the special part RD 200 V as a
trash box or respectively a revision element.

Yet it is not solely in the areas of develop-

ment and sales that ACO Tiefbau is demons-
trating the necessary competence. Even
before building began, the building compa-
nies were given support in the areas of preli-
minary planning, design and technical equip-
ment. Thus the staff of the civil engineering
firms, among others, were prepared before
the construction work began, in training ses-
sions designed to help them complete the
various challenging assignments at Jagel Air
Base.

Drainage channel/trash box A view into the drainage channel run, stretching for a
number of kilometres

Information at a glance

Project: NATO Air Base Schleswig at Jagel ACO Products:

Line channel system ACO DRAIN® Monoblock,
Client: German Armed Forces, Jagel base channel bodies of polymer concrete
construction:
Planning: GMSH, Kropp – ca. 4,000 m Monoblock RD 200 V,
Load Class F 900,
Building companies: Length 2.00 m or 1.00 m as applicable
bbb becker bau GmbH & Co. KG, Bornhöved ACO Tiefbau Vertrieb GmbH
SAW Schleswiger Asphaltsplitt-Werke – Monoblock RD 200 V as revision
GmbH & Co. KG, Schleswig elements, with cast iron GGG floor grids, Postfach 320
Eurovia Teerbau GmbH, Langenhorn Load Class F 900 24755 Rendsburg
Am Ahlmannkai
– Combination for trash box: Monoblock 24782 Büdelsdorf
RD 200 V, with cast iron GGG floor grids, Tel. +49(0)4331 354-500
Load Class F 900 Fax +49(0)4331 354-358
www.aco-tiefbau.de
Project supervision ACO Tiefbau: www.aco-tiefbau.de/referenzen
Construction dates: 04/2008 – 09/2008 Sven Bäsler