Use Geocell to Protect the Geomembrane in Lagoon

In Apr. 2024, I received an email from one of my old customers in Peru, and he needed me to help to check a design for their lagoon project. And he also wants me to help to choose the best option and tell him the reason. For more details please check below information:

Dear Claire:

After several months I’m giving you some information, we are interested in knowing your criteria.

The project is to waterproof a lagoon with Geomembrane and place Geocells on the edge. Please review the 3 drawings and tell me your technical opinion of which one you consider better.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Best regards,

Sir, I discussed with our engineer for your project, please check our answers as follows:

1, We don’t recommend this retaining wall design for your lagoon project, because the foundation of the lagoon is not very stable. Our engineer said the subgrade foundation of the retaining wall is very very important. If the foundation is not good, even the geocell retaining wall is constructed very well, it will easily to incline over a long time.

Another reason is the flow velocity of your lagoon is not high, so no need to use retaining wall design. Based on these two main reasons, we think you can exclude this design.

2, We recommend to use this design(above option 2), due to the foundation of the lagoon is not very good, so the laying of two sections of Geocell is much better. The laying of the lower platform can disperse the pressure of the Geocell on the slope, so it can prevent the sinking of the Gocell for a long term way.

3, The item of TMD-TW354 corresponds to our Geocell HF100-572(height 100mm, welding distance 572mm), seam peel strength 14.2KN/m. Our engineer said this type of Geocell is ok for your project.

4, In the end, what’s the infill material you will use? The infill material for this project should use aggregate, gravel or concrete, can’t use soil and sand. Because soil and sand below the water can be washed out easily.

Kindly check all above information and let me know your comments.
Thanks a lot.

We have two customers in Vietnam who did similar projects in the year of 2019 and 2021, they used our Geocell HF100-660(height 100mm, welding distance 660mm) to protect the edge of the Geomembrane. If you want more information, please contact Claire directly for more design drawings.