Testing ADC Strength

Rebekah A. Hall

ASTM International, the worldwide standards organization, has developed specifications for geosynthetic alternative daily covers (ADCs) to help landfill owners and operators more easily compare and classify products when making purchasing decisions. The category specifications will be based on strength for film, sheet and geotextiles, according to Gary Kolbasuk, a product development engineer with Raven Industries, Sioux Falls, S.D., and ASTM subcommittee member. The test requirements currently are awaiting approval by ASTM members.

“If there are no standards, it's hard to compare these materials,” Kolbasuk says. “This will allow buyers to go to multiple vendors, give them a specification and [obtain] a price.”

Additionally, ASTM is developing standards for testing methods of strip and grab tensile properties for reinforced geomembranes. Having the same requirements for tensile procedures will allow the industry to uniformly measure the properties of the geomembranes, Kolbasuk says.

If approved, the guidelines are assigned an ASTM number and published by the organization in April 2004.