THE EFFECT OF SOIL BURIAL EXPOSURE ON SOME GEOTECHNICAL FABRICS

Commercial geotechnical fabrics have been exposed to accelerated soil burial testing for up to 7 years and the recovered nonwovens then examined for changes using burst strength testing, optical microscopy and infrared spectroscopy. By analytical testing the test specimens were shown to be based on monofilaments of polypropylene, polyethylene terephthalate (three samples) and a mixture of polypropylene and bicomponent fibers (polyamide-coated polypropylene filaments) respectively. None of the samples showed a significant decrease in burst strength outside of the deviation of the experimental data. The polypropylene-monofilament geotextile showed a slight trend of decreasing burst strength with increasing burial time, but no detectable oxidation products by infrared spectroscopy. The polyamide coating on the bicomponent filaments showed distinct signs of delamination after seven years' exposure.