Geotextile

A planar, permeable, polymeric (synthetic or natural) textile material, which may be nonwoven, knitted or woven, used in contact with soil/rock and/or any other geotechnical material in civil engineering applications.

Majority are made from polypropylene fibers as main constituent Standard textile manufacturing
Woven (slit film, monofilament or multifilament) Knitted Nonwoven (needle punched or heat bonded) characterized by an open and porous structure Mechanical and hydraulic properties vary widely Very versatile in their primary function


Geotextile Structures

There are two principal geotextile types, or structures: wovens and nonwovens.   Other manufacturing techniques, for example knitting and stitch bonding, are occasionally used in the
manufacture of specialty products.

Nonwovens.  

Nonwoven geotextiles are manufactured from either staple fibers (staple fibers are short, usually 1 to 4 inches in length) or continuous filaments randomly distributed in layers onto a moving belt to form a felt-like "web".  The web then passes through a needle loom and/or other bonding machine interlocking the fibers/filaments.  Nonwoven geotextiles are highly desirable for subsurface drainage and erosion control applications as well as for road stabilization over wet moisture sensitive soils.

Wovens.

Weaving is a process of interlacing yarns to make a fabric. Woven geotextiles are made from weaving monofilament, multifilament, or slit film yarns. Slit film yarns can be further subdivided into flat tapes and fibrillated (or spider web-like) yarns.  There are two steps in this process of making a woven geotextile: first, manufacture of the filaments or  slitting the film to create yarns; and second, weaving the yarns to form the geotextile.

Slit film fabrics are commonly used for sediment control, i.e. silt fence, and road stabilization pplications but are poor choices for subsurface drainage and erosion control applications. Though the flat tape slit film yarns are quite strong, they form a fabric that has relatively poor permeability. Alternatively, fabrics made with fibrillated tape yarns have better permeability and more uniform openings than flat tape products.

Monofilament wovens have better permeability, making them suitable for certain drainage and
erosion control applications. High strength multifilament wovens are primarily used in
reinforcement applications

Benifits  Applications