1. Improve roads
There are many ways to use geosynthetics in road sections with the aim of giving roads better performance and longer service life, or both. When geotextiles and geogrids are used in different parts of the road, the functions of geosynthetics are:
Geotextiles are used for isolation and reinforcement of embankments and roadbeds;
Geogrid is used for reinforcement of embankments and roadbeds;
Geogrids are used for lateral reinforcement inside embankments.
A new development in this area is the addition of continuous fibers during the construction of roadbeds. Similarly, microgrids can also be used in pavement. Indoor and field trials have been carried out in this regard. To date, the success has been the application of dispersed fibers (typically polypropylene) in gravel roadbeds.
A future development is to use geosynthetics to treat holes in roadbeds. In the method, wick drainage is firstly arranged in the hole, acupuncture non-woven fabric is laid on the wick drainage, and then backfilled with fiber-reinforced soil. The method is promising and awaits field trials.
2. No groove pipe maintenance
The city’s infrastructure is constantly aging, and building materials are hundreds of years old. Repairs using grooveless technology are an emerging industry, and they all use polymeric materials.
Since the existing methods all reduce the size of the original pipe network, the current progress is to squeeze the original pipe with a high-pressure probe to expand the diameter. Then, the new pipe is quickly inserted and lined. In this way, the capacity of the original pipeline is not reduced. In some cases, the diameter of the pipe is also enlarged.
The difficulty faced by the current grooveless pipeline maintenance is that lateral contact cannot be formed, and lateral free leakage points are formed. In the future, this difficulty may be solved with a remote control device within the cutting system, which can not only pass through the new pipe, but also achieve perfect lateral contact with the following robot.
3. Soil and Water Conservation System
Soil erosion affects the use of land and farmland, and is also one of the causes of water pollution. In order to control, mitigate and avoid soil erosion, many soil erosion control methods related to geosynthetics have been adopted.
A possible future development is the use of high-strength geosynthetic meshes (high-strength geotextiles or geogrids) to prevent avalanches. The crux of the problem is estimating the forces, positions and arrangements of grid and anchoring materials, as well as overload induction in very climatic environments.
Post time: May-06-2022