Neat to read about that technique being used in port of Los Angeles while sitting here eating breakfast in my boat. Unexpected.
The Grid That Doubles the Strength of the Ground
11–20 of 42 posts
Re: The Grid That Doubles the Strength of the Ground
#12[dead]
Re: The Grid That Doubles the Strength of the Ground
#13Of course, you need "forever plastics" to make this work long term. It's like everything else where you have a material with decent compressive strength but weak tensile strength. You need something with some tensile strength to hold it together. That's what rebar does. It's why rebar rusting out destroys concrete structures. The same problem applies to geotextile containment of dirt. If the textile degrades, it's ju…
There appears to be a bamboo-derived plastic out there with high tensile strength, but I don't think it'd work for this application, because it degrades within 50 days of being buried in soil. I wonder if being in gravel would delay that, due to the different microbes present? It seems like there are usually biobased solutions out there, but they aren't as cost-effective or easy to procure as the forever plastics, so…
You can have material that biodegrades, or material that doesn't biodegrade. But you can't have material that doesn't biodegrade that biodegrades. Plastic is a wonder material because it's a forever material.
Re: The Grid That Doubles the Strength of the Ground
#14I saw some examples of this while travelling in Japan last year, and am keen to replicate. I suspect, like a lot of things, the local product there is superior to what I could find back home here in AU. At some castle courtyard, we were walking around on a smooth-white-gravel surface, and I didn't immediately register how different it felt. Stare at the ground for a few moments, and notice some of the small (15-20mm)…
The sad part is how expensive it is (I’m in Australia too). Seems up front like a cheaper alternative to pavers but both the moulded plastic and the soft plastic that fans out versions are a solid $40-$45/sqm AUD.
Can buy brick pavers for that and you still have to purchase the pebbles to go in it…
Re: The Grid That Doubles the Strength of the Ground
#15> And these strips don’t just engage with the backfill like geogrid; they encapsulate it.
I wonder when grady is going to issue a mea culpa for using too much AI in his video production?
Re: The Grid That Doubles the Strength of the Ground
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
There appears to be a bamboo-derived plastic out there with high tensile strength, but I don't think it'd work for this application, because it degrades within 50 days of being buried in soil. I wonder if being in gravel would delay that, due to the different microbes present? It seems like there are usually biobased solutions out there, but they aren't as cost-effective or easy to procure as the forever plastics, so…
You can have material that biodegrades, or material that doesn't biodegrade. But you can't have material that doesn't biodegrade that biodegrades. Plastic is a wonder material because it's a forever material.
That reminds me of a fun research presentation I saw a decade ago. They engineered a bioplastic which would break down on sustained contact with water. While trying to come up with applications, they proposed reducing plastic consumption by using it for ... water bottles.
Re: The Grid That Doubles the Strength of the Ground
#17Of course, you need "forever plastics" to make this work long term. It's like everything else where you have a material with decent compressive strength but weak tensile strength. You need something with some tensile strength to hold it together. That's what rebar does. It's why rebar rusting out destroys concrete structures. The same problem applies to geotextile containment of dirt. If the textile degrades, it's ju…
Yep, my first thought when I saw this was "and everywhere this is used, microplastics out to wazoo."
Re: The Grid That Doubles the Strength of the Ground
#18Woah dude this is fantastic. I’ve definitely seen this stuff in some places like in unpaved parking lots. Another mystery this has solved for me that I forgot to look into is washboarding on roads. If you’ve ever been to Chilean Patagonia you’ll know that the national park roads there have extraordinary traffic and consequently have quite an intense amount of washboarding. I thought perhaps this was some intentional…
Watching the video clearly shows example of how this drastically lessens the washboarding you specifically mentioned.
Re: The Grid That Doubles the Strength of the Ground
#19Of course, you need "forever plastics" to make this work long term. It's like everything else where you have a material with decent compressive strength but weak tensile strength. You need something with some tensile strength to hold it together. That's what rebar does. It's why rebar rusting out destroys concrete structures. The same problem applies to geotextile containment of dirt. If the textile degrades, it's ju…
There appears to be a bamboo-derived plastic out there with high tensile strength, but I don't think it'd work for this application, because it degrades within 50 days of being buried in soil. I wonder if being in gravel would delay that, due to the different microbes present? It seems like there are usually biobased solutions out there, but they aren't as cost-effective or easy to procure as the forever plastics, so…
There are species of wood that do very well buried. Black locust is known to last 100yr buried. I wonder if you could scale up the effect using a larger grid of black locust 2x8s [edit] or even smaller dimension mill scrap.
Re: The Grid That Doubles the Strength of the Ground
#20Disgusting. All runoff will be forever full of microplastics, especially when you can achieve something similar with raw concrete and an imprinting tool.