Frozen Soil Engineering Disasters: A Geosynthetics Solution

Dear Colleagues,

Half of the Earth’s land area is perennial, seasonal and ephemeral permafrost. With global warming, as well as increased human activity, the safety of the infrastructure in these areas is severely challenged, including with the deformation of roadbeds, damage to house foundations, and the settlement of oil and gas pipelines, amongst others. The consequences of these engineering disasters are not only reflected in the engineering itself, but also affect the environment, agriculture, health, and even the geopolitical sphere. When faced with such a systemic crisis, solutions must be global. How can geosynthetics and the geosynthetics community contribute to solving these crises and help heal the world?

Geosynthetics is a generic name that encompasses geotextiles, geogrids, geomembranes, geofoams, and more. These materials are easy to manufacture and are commonly used in contact with soil or other related materials as an integral part of an engineered structure. Over the past 50 years, engineers have shown an increasing interest in geosynthetics and their field applications, mainly because the use of geosynthetics provides technically efficient, cost-effective, environmentally friendly and/or energy-saving alternative solutions to many field problems in the fields of civil, mining, agricultural, and aquaculture engineering.

In this Special Issue, we invite high-quality original research papers that focus on state-of-the-art techniques and methods in the design, construction, and analysis of geosynthetics. We welcome both theoretical and applied papers of a high technical standard across different disciplines, thus facilitating awareness of techniques and methods in one area that may be applicable to other areas. We seek high-quality submissions of original research and review articles on all aspects of geosynthetic engineering with potential for practical application.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Manufacturing technology for advanced geosynthetics;
• Development of intelligent geosynthetics;
• Geosynthetics–soil interaction in extreme environments;
• Climatic and environmental effects of geosynthetics-related works;
• Geosynthetics in cold regions;
• Education related to geosynthetics.

Dr. Pengfei He
Dr. Wenhu Fan
Dr. Yang Lu
Prof. Dr. Jianhua Dong
Guest Editors

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