Geosynthetics damage during installation laboratory study. Influence of the confining material

The confining material plays a relevant role on geosynthetics damage during installation. The geosynthetics quality control against that damage must follow ENV 10772-1 (1997). The granular material prescribed in that standard is synthetic and its use has been leading to conservative results in large number of cases. In order to contribute to the definition of a different confining material a test program was developed, considering two natural confining materials, with similar grain size as the synthetic one, and different types of geosynthetics. The results of the study are presented and analysed, and then compared with that obtained using the confining material defined on ENV 10772-1 (1997). Finally, the main conclusions are put forward