Geotextiles In Specialist Marine Applications: An Australia Perspective Over 32 Years

Geotextiles were first applied into civil construction projects in the 1960s in the USA and Europe in drainage and separation applications for road construction. The technology rapidly developed from that point onwards with the First International Conference on Geotextiles held in Paris in 1977. Due to the need for greater knowledge and understanding of the material, the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS) founded in 1982 has subsequently organized a worldwide conference every four years and its numerous chapters have additional conferences.

The use of geotextiles has now grown to such an extent that virtually every civil construction project undertaken includes a geosynthetic of some description. The marine and coastal environment is an extremely harsh environment to use what is a relatively thin light weight material, where the geotextile will be subjected to abrasion from armour rock and marine sediment, large dynamic flow conditions from both tidal action and wave impact. As such, geotextiles used in coastal and marine must be able to withstand conditions which are far more aggressive than the original road construction applications.

This paper highlights four significant coastal/marine projects which have contributed to development and understanding of use of geotextiles in the coastal and marine environment in Australia over the past 32 years