A CSPE (Hypalon) primer

January 1, 1970  |  Products

By Steve Roades Chlorosulfonated polyethylene (CSPE) geomembranes have a history of providing long-term performance in exposed environments. These geosynthetic barriers are increasingly referred to generically as CSM, but many people still refer to them by the no-longer-produced Hypalon elastomer br…
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How do wick drains work?

January 1, 1970  |  Products

By Ron Bygness The term wick drain is a misnomer because these clever devices do not actually wick away water. Wick drains, perhaps more accurately called strip or prefabricated vertical drains (PVDs), accelerate preconstruction soil consolidation. The drains are composed of a plastic strip with dra…
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Apparent cohesion leads to eventual failure

January 1, 1970  |  Products

These photos show a wall failure next to a corner. This failure occurred in an area where successive triangular sectors of geogrid layers were not installed. Failure is to be expected because reinforced walls without reinforcement should fail. Curiously, this failure occurred about one year after th…
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Inadequate compaction necessitates massive remedy

January 1, 1970  |  Products

These photos show a massive remedy utilizing anchors needed for an initially inexpensive geotextile reinforced wall. One reason that necessitated this remedy is poor compaction. Also, risers collecting surface water were embedded in the reinforced soil zone. These risers were connected sequentially …
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Redundancy that helped a wall survive an extremely high seismic load

January 1, 1970  |  Products

This photo shows a geosynthetic-reinforced soil wall that survived a substantially higher seismic load than its designed seismic load. This resulted from redundancy due to use of soil design Φ value lower than its actual value. Furthermore, the substantial apparent cohesion and toe resistance were …
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Geotextile puncture resistance

January 1, 1970  |  Products

From the GMA Techline RE: Geotextile puncture resistance [I have] a question for you on geotextile puncture resistance. I was looking through your book to refresh my memory on the calculation procedure on geotextile puncture resistance, Section 2.5.4. I saw the scaling factors S2 and S3 and the exam…
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Project Angostura

January 1, 1970  |  Products

Geotextile tube coffer dam By Sören Schmidt The problem, the plan… The Angostura project is owned by Colbún, one of the largest energy producers in Chile. Angostura is a hydroelectric dam project with a capacity of 350mw. The dam is situated in the Bio-Bio River, a few kilometers d…
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