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On Feb. 7, 2018, Owens Corning released a video featuring Andy Durham, P.E., the company’s senior geosynthetics engineer based in Granville, Ohio, in a YouTube video on installing the RhinoMat reinforced composite geosynthetic (RCG) at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Full-Scale Levee Breach and Hydraulic Test Facility at the Engineer Research & Development Center (ERDC) in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 2017. According to the USACE website, the 11-acre (4.5-ha) and 4-million-gallon (15-million-l) facility, completed in 2010, is the only one of its kind in the world that allows researchers to validate results of small-, mid- and full-scale levee breach experiments.
The USACE said the design of the test facility consists of three earthen basins using gravity to convey water through each basin. A pump replenishes the water in the source basin after each test. Slides gates are located at the source and test basin inlet structures to control the water flowing between basins. The USACE used the RhinoMat RCG to line the three basins.
Owens Corning said the RhinoMat geomembrane is specifically designed for use in water retention and containment applications to weld easier, install faster and contain better. It said RhinoMat’s durable, stress-crack resistant, lightweight construction provides maximum performance in all climates and environmental conditions.
The company said the next-generation iteration of RhinoMat used at the ERDC is factory-engineered and -welded, allowing for faster deployment in the field.
The video describes the RhinoMat product used for the project and shows the rapid installation of the geomembrane at this important facility in an age of powerful hurricanes striking major metropolitan areas, coastal industrial and energy facilities, and sensitive environmental areas.
Durham has written a case study of the installation at the ERDC that will appear in the April/May 2018 issue of Geosynthetics magazine.
The video can be viewed on YouTube at https://tinyurl.com/USACEGeo.