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| Product & Process Technologies |
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| The Engineered Advantage™ |
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The most robust variants of the integrally formed grid structures manufactured by the Company are formed by extruding a flat sheet of polymeric material, punching apertures in the sheet in a generally square or rectangular pattern and then orienting the apertured sheets through a stretching process. This process is known as calendering and punching.
Finished products are typically marketed in roll form 1 to 4 meters wide and in lengths of up to 100 meters. Apertures of several shapes and sizes are created by the punching and stretching processes to achieve many differing geometries and properties in the finished products. Products of this type are produced from either virgin polypropylene or polyethylene resins.
The highly differentiated products produced in this manner, known as Tensar® Geogrids, exhibit high structural integrity (resistance to rupture when subject to mechanical stress in installation and use), high efficiency in load transfer (immediate resistance to elongation when subject to load and immediate acceptance of applied forces in internal reinforcement applications), high flexural and torsional stiffness (resistance to deformation when subject to bending and in-plane rotational forces) and high durability (resistance to degradation of mechanical properties over time). They are also light weight and easily handled.
As a result of this unique combination of features, this class of products is highly suitable for use as structural load bearing elements in many demanding earthwork construction applications and is primarily marketed for use in such applications.
This process technology is practiced by the Company at its manufacturing facilities in Morrow, Georgia (USA), Blackburn, England and Wuhan, China. The product families produced with these procedures include:
Uniaxial (UX) Geogrids – These materials are the most robust materials the Company produces, using the calendering and punching process which creates a more geometrically precise and refined finished product than is possible with the other processes. These materials are formed by extruding a flat sheet of polyethylene material, punching apertures in the sheet in a particular pattern and then orienting the apertured sheet in one principal (uniaxial) direction through a final stretching process.
UX Geogrids are particularly well suited to demanding structural applications in which sustained loads will be experienced for up to 100 years or more, for instance, in earth retention applications.
Biaxial (BX) Geogrids – These materials are also produced by the calendering and punching process for the same reasons cited for UX Geogrids. These materials are formed in a manner similar to UX Geogrids, but in this instance by stretching an apertured sheet of extruded polypropylene in two principal (biaxial) directions.
BX Geogrids are particularly well suited to demanding structural applications in which periodic (but not sustained) loads will be experienced, for instance, in a roadway foundation as a heavy vehicle passes. |
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