Ciaran Reilly presented a paper static & cyclic plate load testing of a model geogrid reinforced unpaved load in a large-scale laboratory box at TU Dublin at the recent 12th International Geosynthetics Conference in Rome. The venue was the very impressive Auditorium Parco della Musica.

The paper was in a session with several similar papers and an outcome of the discussion that followed was the clear need to standardise large-scale box models so variability can be quantified and tests repeated among labs.

The Conference recalled the history of geosynthetics as the manuscript where “geotextiles” and “geomembranes” were first written by Dr J. P. Giroud in 1977 was presented to Giroud Lecturer Ennio Palmeira.

A link to the paper is here: https://app.box.com/s/muiug8z056t7hy5j0d92tp2sb3ptdina