August 1, 2018
Recent project experience that included continuous peel testing across the roll width of geocomposite materials has shed light on the issue of peel strength between geotextiles and geonets that are heat-bonded together. The variability of peel strength across a roll width is found to be much greater than expected, with the typical standard deviation often …
The complexities of the built environment continually challenge the limits of engineering and construction. For infrastructure built-in areas with settlement-prone soils or other hazardous geological conditions, assembling a team of experts to plan for challenges is essential. Industries like mining, oil and gas, and utilities must often bore through earth and rock to build tunnels, …
UV Weathering of Geotextiles Q: My firm is providing construction quality assurance services for a landfill cell expansion. We are having an issue with our contractor and are going to be in a position of having 8 ounces/square yard (271 g/m2) of nonwoven geotextile exposed for a period of time, which exceeds the seven-day limit …
In December 2017, the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) and GRID-Arendal, an organization that supports environmentally sustainable development in partnership with UN Environment and other collaborators, published “Mine Tailings Storage: Safety Is No Accident.” The report recommends mining companies adopt simple steps to reduce environmental destruction and death by changing the way they store …
New applications of geosynthetics are being found that form from overlaps of existing functions, such as protection, separation, filtration and drainage. One new geosynthetic product, the geosynthetic mattress ballast layer (GBL), was first implemented for an ore-processing waste facility protection application in 2015. The GBL is a geotextile containment system that provides a tubular component …
July 31, 2018
Geosynthetic clay liners (GCL) and polymer-modified geosynthetic clay liners (PMG) are gaining favor for use in industrial waste disposal and ore-processing applications (Athanassopoulos et al. 2015, Donovan et al. 2016a, Donovan et al. 2016b). The GCL or PMG can be a component of a composite liner system that will allow for increased performance (relative to …
June 20, 2018
Pete Ruane, president and CEO of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), announced he will be retiring from the organization in October 2018 after 30 years of service, ARTBA said in a June 19, 2018, prepared statement. He is the longest tenured head of the 116-year-old organization. After Ruane’s departure, ARTBA executive vice …
June 1, 2018
Over the decades, soil mass reinforced by layers of geosynthetics has been used widely and successfully in a variety of earth structures, such as mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) retaining walls, embankments, slopes and shallow foundations. Due to the proven benefits of geosynthetic reinforced soil (GRS), including cost-effectiveness, simple and fast construction, and tolerance of differential …
Geotextiles play an essential role in geotechnical projects. A significant use for geotextiles is as a separator and filter in drainage and erosion control applications (Holtz 2002). A temporary erosion control application geotextile, such as silt fencing, is used to prevent soil erosion by containing the soil and turbid water in a onetime operation. For …
Deep patch is a repair technique that has been widely used on low-volume roads in the Pacific Northwest as a cost-effective mitigation technique to address settlement and shallow landsliding of side-cast embankment fill slopes and natural slopes consisting of weak soils overlying stronger soils (Cuelho et al. 2012). A deep patch consists of a subexcavation …