Whales in Geomembranes: Stronger than Concrete

Whale forming in tailings pond over peat

Whale forming in tailings pond over peat

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, and as the title of the post implies, even concrete ballast may not be strong enough to weight them down. [Source: geosynthetica.net. Image: FLI via geosynthetica.net]

1 Comment

  1. i have seen this kind of problem in my place and i am doing my project on this. the reason was mainly due to the raising water table and lack of gas drainage . kindly suggest me some strong literatures on this .
    thank you

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