Dr. Peter Rankilor, a pioneer in the geosynthetic, geotextile and geomembrane industry was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison as a result of his January conviction on “indecent assault and incest” charges stemming from events between 1980 and 1996. The charges came in a Manchester, UK court on 24 different counts of serious sexual offences against children. Source: New Civil Engineer.
Press Releases
Tensar Corporation Makes Major Investment to Increase Geogrid Production Capacity
Tensar Corporation will be making a significant investment in their Morrow, Georgia production facility where they manufacture geogrids such as their Triax line. The improvements will come online in 2012 and increase production capacity by […]
Standards and Codes
ASTM Updates for April 2011
It’s that time again. Here are a collection of changes/additions to ASTM standards that are relevant to geotechnical engineers, soils labs, CQA firms and related disciplines. There are a couple of interesting new standards available. D7698 is a new procedure for estimation of in-place density and water content of soil and aggregate by correlation with complex impedance. I’m not eactly sure what that is, but it sounds cool. There is also a new standard (D7702) that provides guidance for the evaluation of direct shear results involving geosynthetics. Read on for these and other updates.
Failures
Whales in Geomembranes: Stronger than Concrete
Geosynthetica has some interesting photos of so called ‘whales’ in geomembranes. These giant bubbles are caused by a variety of things, but are essentially gas trapped underneath the geomembrane that can have significant buoyant force, […]