One day, I received a message from an old customer:

I like to change this stone retaining wall by geocell as pictures. But do you have typical drawings for height 6 m?

My answers are as follows:

For design, we only give some information for reference, can’t design for you, as we don’t know your local project information, and we don’t have an engineer to design, hope you can understand. A geological survey report must be produced by a specialized geological agency, and then calculated and designed by professional engineers.

For the Geocells you must use the best quality, not the regular ASTM standard quality. The ESCR must reach 5000 hours at least, and OIT must reach 150min at least. GB standard Geocell can’t be used on retaining wall projects, never, GB quality can’t be used. Because for retaining walls, all Geocells are exposed to the sun, so it has much higher requirements than other projects. If you use bad quality Geocell, it is very very easy to break.

We recommend you to use Geocell type 200-660 for retaining wall projects, height 200mm, welding distance 660mm, 4-6 cells based on your projects. ASTM standard quality and ESCR must reach 5000 hours, and OIT must reach 150 minutes. ESCR and OIT are very very important for the Geocell retaining wall.

Most manufacturers in China can’t reach, it because if ESCR reaches 5000 hours and OIT reaches 150mins, the price will be much higher than regular ASTM standard quality. Hope you can understand this situation. We have known each other for many years, I tell you the truth.

In China, most manufacturers’ regular ASTM standards only for seam peel strength can reach 14.2KN/m. For ESCR and OIT, most of them can’t be reached. If ESCR reaches 5000hrs and OIT reaches 150min, the price will be much higher than regular ASTM standard quality. So it is the difference for a big price gap.

I quoted our best price to our customer and explained the above information to him. And our customer said: This kind of retaining wall i think quality is most important!!!

Besides the Geocell quality, our engineers said the subgrade foundation of the retaining wall is also very very important, and the subgrade foundation must be constructed to fully meet the project standards before laying the geocells.

Regarding the construction standards of subgrade foundation, a geological survey report must be produced by a specialized geological agency, and then calculated and designed by professional engineers. If the foundation is not firm, even if the geocell retaining wall is constructed very well, it will easily tilt over time. We have a customer in Singapore. Their retaining wall foundation construction standards are very good. I would like to share them with you for reference.

Any further questions, let Claire know freely. I’m the Geocell expert to answer any of your questions.

Based on my 14 years of experience in the Geocell field.