Geotextiles have a great impact on modern buildings by stabilizing the ground, improving drainage and filtration, separating aggregates and dispersing the loads imposed. Ensuring that the right geotextile is selected for the project means understanding the difference between them – the key is whether they are woven or non-woven. Now let’s use my post to distinguish woven geotextile from non-woven geotextile.
What is geotextile?
Geotextiles are fabrics used for geotechnical engineering applications, such as highway and railway embankments, earth embankments and coastal protective structures, designed to perform one or more basic functions, such as filtration, drainage, soil layer separation, reinforcement or stabilization.
Woven geotextile
Basically, woven geotextile is made by weaving a single yarn on the loom to form a uniform length. Different materials can be used, such as cut film, fibrilized yarn and monofilament, but no matter what material is used, the knitting technology is unchanged.
This ensures the strength of woven geotextile, making it an excellent choice for road construction, under driveways, residential streets, highways and other applications.
The woven geotextile has poor water permeability, with only a few exceptions, so it is not the best choice for drainage engineering. On the contrary, they are very suitable for long-term separation and reinforcement applications and are corrosion resistant.
Non-woven geotextile
Although the tensile strength of nonwoven geotextile is lower than that of woven fabric, it still has strong strength, durability and excellent drainage performance.
Non-woven geotextile is a kind of felt-like fabric, which is made of polypropylene or a mixture of polypropylene and polyester fibers by thermal bonding, and then by acupuncture, calendering and other methods.
This kind of geotextile is easier to cut, has high water permeability, and will not lose its strength with the passage of time, just like the woven fabric used underground. This makes it very suitable for use under driveways and roads and in land and rainwater drainage systems that require long-term ground stabilization and filtration.
Difference between woven geotextile and non-woven fabric
There are significant differences between woven geotextiles and nonwoven geotextiles, especially in their application and manufacturing methods. The type of project you are working on will determine the most suitable geotextile for you. The main differences between woven geotextile and non-woven geotextile are as follows:
- First of all, woven geotextile is the best choice for reinforcement and stabilization applications, while non-woven geotextile is very suitable for filtration, separation and drainage applications.
- Secondly, woven geotextile (with a few exceptions) is semi-permeable and has a low flow rate, while non-woven geotextile is permeable and has a high flow rate.
- Third, woven geotextile has high bearing capacity and tensile strength, and is usually used for road construction, while non-woven geotextile is usually measured by weight.
- Both woven geotextile and nonwoven geotextile can be made of polyester or polypropylene yarn or fiber.