The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) has worked out a new technology to turn loose clay bed into solid defense through compression and detonation.

Clay, due to its loose property, often causes landslides in construction works. Traditional piling and fencing technologies, which consume excess time and effort, hardly ensure due stability and therefore still pose potential threat to the security of the construction.

The new technology, based on the antidetonation property of the clay and a formula on the amount of dynamite to be used for different regions, increases the clay's tensile strength so that the reinforced clay bed can be as solid as rocks, Wednesday's PLA Daily quoted experts with the Command Academy of the Second Artillery Corps, who own the technology.

To date, the academy has applied the new technology into 11 military and civil construction projects, said the PLA Daily.

(Xinhua News Agency January 09, 2002)