Project description and overview:

Geocomposites and geotextiles are used for soil stabilisation in landfill, dams, water, roadways and mining tailings dams where steep inclines are encountered in these applications.

Geofabrics is proposing to develop a new “commercial grade” thermally bonded geocomposite material with superior technical performance characteristics and cost competitiveness. The thermal bonded geocomposite will have the following competitive advantages compared to existing imported products:

• Higher bond strength
• Improved drainage performance
• Capability to manufacture to project specific requirements such as length and width
• Cost competitive product from reduced manufacturing costs

The cost benefit to the customer using the Geofabrics’ thermal bonded geocomposite will be:

• Reduced project installation cost – soil is added to the top of the geocomposite to achieve the filtration specification.
• Improved project implementation costs – by eliminating lead times of imported product and providing higher level of responsiveness, Geofabrics can react to changes in project specification or requirements

The project will involve the following stages:

• Finalise prototype development
• Trials of commercial scale machinery that has the capability for manufacturing at full scale
• Design and trials of automation and robotic technology for high risk (manual handling and high temperature operating zones) tasks