Maine DOT Geotextile Fabrics

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

Maine DOT - Geotextile Uses

Maine projects span tidewater marshes, glaciomarine clays, river valleys, and rocky uplands. Add long freeze–thaw seasons, snowmelt, nor’easters, and coastal surge, and you get subgrades that can soften, pump fines, rut, and erode. 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 soils and granular base. It prevents fine soils—especially sensitive marine clays and silty tills—from migrating into the base under traffic, spreads load, and preserves base thickness. Where subgrades are very soft or saturated (low shoulders, marsh edges, utility crossings), crews roll out geotextile to create a working platform so haul trucks and pavers don’t punch through. On exceptionally weak ground, fabric 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 pipes, and separate drainage stone from surrounding soils behind retaining walls, abutments, and wingwalls. Matching apparent opening size (AOS) and permittivity to local soils—tight clays inland versus cleaner sands along the coast—lets water move while fines stay put, reducing clogged outlets, wet spots, and shoulder drop-offs. In cold regions, 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 coastal works—geotextiles serve as riprap underlayment. A tough nonwoven filter is placed on the prepared slope or bed before armor stone. It prevents underlying soil from piping through rock voids during high velocities, tidal cycles, and ice-out events, helping the rock “lock in” and protecting embankments at bridge approaches and channel bends. Along tidal rivers and shorelines, generous overlaps or sewn seams and proper anchoring keep the filter continuous under wave run-up and drawdown.

MaineDOT corridors include 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 preserving drainage continuity. The same concept applies around structural penetrations and backwalls, where a filter layer keeps weeps and outlets functioning.

Maine also makes strategic use of pavement interlayers. Asphalt-impregnated nonwoven geotextile beneath overlays improves waterproofing and slows reflective cracking—important where deicing salts, long winters, and day-night temperature swings accelerate pavement aging. On chip seals, paving fabrics limit water intrusion into 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 structures. 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.

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 Maine’s soils, hydraulics, and traffic demands.SourcesAsk ChatGPT

Maine DOT