Industry paper

Five geotextile tube projects review for survivability and performance after decades in challenging environments

Authors: Thomas Stephens, Nathalia Castro

Engineers, agencies, and owners have been asking the question, “How long will a geotextile tube survive and perform in severe environments?”. This paper will help answer that question by reviewing five geotextile tube projects and review their design, their installation, and their survival and performance over the past 30 years. The first two projects have been in service since 1993; one in the Mississippi River and one along the US Atlantic Ocean shoreline. The third project was installed in Galveston Bay along the Intercoastal Waterway in 2008. In the fourth project, the geotextile tubes are part of the foundation of a container port in Brazil installed in 2011 and the fifth project, completed in 2012, presents the geotextile tubes in combination with a woven geotextile wrapped face retaining wall being used to rebuild and protect a shoreline in Punta Hermosa, Peru. All projects have been monitored for survivability and all are performing as designed.