Kentucky KYTC Geotextile Fabrics

Solmax DOT Standard Specification Product Chart (click image to expand)

Kentucky KYTC - Geotextile Uses

Kentucky projects cross karstic limestone plains, shale and sandstone in the Appalachians, loessial silts in the west, and wide Ohio and Kentucky River floodplains. Add heavy rains, freeze–thaw swings, and steep cut slopes, and you get subgrades that can soften, pump, rut, and lose fines. Geotextiles are the quiet engineering layer that helps pavements, structures, and drainage systems keep performing.

The first role is separation and stabilization. On new lanes, shoulder widenings, and rehab work, a woven geotextile is placed between native soil and granular base. It keeps fine soils—especially clayey residuum over limestone and silty loess—from migrating up into the aggregate under traffic, spreads load, and preserves base thickness. Where subgrades are very soft or wet (floodplain approaches, utility crossings, low shoulders), crews roll out fabric to create a working platform so trucks and pavers don’t punch through. On exceptionally weak ground or staged construction over marginal subgrade, geotextile is often paired with a geogrid for added stiffness.

Because water drives many failures, filtration and drainage are constant priorities. Nonwoven geotextiles line underdrain trenches, wrap perforated pipe, and separate drainage stone from surrounding soils behind retaining walls and abutments. Matching apparent opening size (AOS) and permittivity to local soils—tight clays on the Bluegrass and cleaner river sands in the bottoms—lets water move while fines stay put, cutting off the mechanisms that clog outlets, create wet spots, and destabilize shoulders. In cold pockets, pairing a nonwoven with open-graded aggregate also forms a capillary break, limiting upward moisture that fuels frost heave and base softening.

Where flows concentrate—culverts, storm outfalls, streambanks, and channel linings—geotextiles serve as riprap underlayment. A robust nonwoven filter is placed on the prepared slope before armor rock. It prevents subgrade from piping through rock voids during high velocities and debris-laden floods, helps the riprap “lock in,” and protects embankments at bridge approaches and channel bends. In karst areas, maintaining a continuous filter is especially important to prevent fines from migrating into voids and sinkhole throats.

KYTC corridors include extensive mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls and grade separations. Here, geotextiles act as joint and face filters, tucked behind panel or block joints so backfill fines don’t migrate to the face while drainage continuity is preserved. The same concept applies at wingwalls, backwalls, and around structural penetrations, where a filter layer protects weeps and outlets from silty inflow without trapping water.

Kentucky also makes effective use of pavement interlayers. Asphalt-impregnated nonwoven geotextile beneath overlays improves waterproofing and slows reflective cracking—important where daily temperature swings, deicing salts, and heavy truck corridors accelerate pavement aging. On chip seals common to rural routes, paving fabrics limit water intrusion into the base and subgrade, extending service life with minimal added thickness.

For temporary erosion and sediment control, geotextiles appear in silt fence, inlet protection, curb socks, and check dams. They filter runoff while trapping fines—crucial for stormwater compliance on steep cuts, long medians, and urban work zones. At project entrances, stabilized construction exits typically include a nonwoven geotextile beneath coarse rock; the fabric spreads wheel loads and prevents stone from punching into wet soils, reducing track-out onto public roads.

Finally, geotextiles provide liner protection in stormwater basins, lined ditches, salt-shed pads, and containment areas. Heavy nonwoven fabrics cushion geomembranes from angular aggregate and construction traffic, lowering puncture risk and boosting system life.

Good field practice ties it together: prepare subgrades smooth, avoid wrinkles, overlap or sew seams as needed, anchor with pins or the first lift, and cover promptly. Selection is function-driven—woven for stabilization and tensile capacity; nonwoven for filtration, drainage, and protection—tuned to Kentucky’s soils, hydraulics, and traffic demands.

Kentucky KYTC