Flooding ranks among the costliest of all natural disasters, and can impact nearly anyplace in the world. It can happen on a dizzying variety of scales, affecting entire regions or a single worksite. And it can manifest in many different ways, from natural seasonal inundations (which can nonetheless be hugely disruptive to human life) to catastrophic breaches and spill-overs that introduce water to places where it’s definitely not supposed to be.

Here at Synthetex, our innovative fabric-formed concrete products can be used in a variety of flood-control and prevention applications, offering a highly competitive alternative to traditional pre-cast concrete solutions.

The Importance of Flood Control & Prevention

As we referenced above, flooding can take a number of forms and arise from a wide variety of triggers. Snowmelt and/or heavy rainfall historically swelled many free-flowing rivers to bankfull and beyond, with the overflow washing over the aptly named alluvial hinterland known as the floodplain. Channelization, dikes, levees, and dams can control such river flooding, but the vagaries of weather and geologic process—and the incredible power of flowing water—can overwhelm such alterations, and other kinds of development, through, for example, the loss of the natural sponges wetlands provide, can end up exacerbating flooding.

Storm surges from hurricanes, backed-up storm drains during torrential rainfall, broken pipes and tanks, breached levees and failed embankments, and any number of other processes can, of course, promote flooding to large or small degrees. The resulting impact to infrastructure—and, all too often, the threat to human life and livelihood—can be enormous, and include not only physical damage but also contamination.

HYDROTEX Products That Can be Used in Flood Prevention

The cutting-edge, cast-in-place fabriforms we offer here at Synthetex can support flood prevention and control in a wide variety of settings and applications. Our HYDROTEX fabric-formed concrete can be used, for example, to armor embankments and thereby decrease their vulnerability to breaching. They can also provide erosion protection to the detention ponds often used to store excess water and thereby prevent or minimize flooding.  Another example, HYDROTEX is used by FEMA, US Army Corps of Engineers, and other agencies to line and protect emergency spillways.  Additionally, levee embankment protection even on steep slopes is possible with HYDROTEX. 

These HYDROTEX products offer supreme adaptability, being completely customizable to the site and the subgrade. Because they’re flexible fabrics laid out to exactly conform to surfaces before being pumped with fine aggregate concrete, they’re much more space-efficient to transport than alternatives such as riprap, pre-cast concrete mattresses, and gabions, and they’re generally vastly easier to install, without the need for large crews and heavy machinery. The combination of cost-effectiveness, custom sizing, and hassle-free, precision-fit installation—not to mention excellent durability and minimal long-term maintenance—makes our HYDROTEX fabric formworks a fantastic choice for flood-control and mitigation, protecting our world’s infrastructure.

Among the specific HYDROTEX products well suited for these kinds of applications are our Articulating Block Concrete Linings, Enviromat Concrete Linings (which facilitate the growth of vegetation that can further reinforce embankments, provide ecological services, and improve site aesthetics), and Filter Point Concrete Linings.

A Case Study: The Balason River in West Bengal, India

To learn more about how HYDROTEX products can serve to reduce flood risk, check out this case study focused on the Balason River in the Darjeeling District of West Bengal, India. After major, consequential flooding from a breached embankment and monsoon rains in 1998 and 1999, authorities turned to Synthetex for a solution. In 2000, HYDROTEX Articulating Block Mattresses strung through with revetment cables were used to reinforce the Balason River embankment, which had been prepared with locally sourced riverbed material. Our fabric-formed concrete had proven both less expensive and more adaptable to the complicated physical environment, and less environmental impacts from aggregate mining and transport, than the stone riprap and gabions that had been considered.

The Synthetex Advantage: Flood Protection Products

With Synthetex, your flood control and flood prevention project—whether pursued along a canal, a riverway, a detention pond, levee, overflow spillway, or anywhere else—gets the benefit not only of cutting-edge fabriform technology but also the detailed involvement and assistance offered by our engineering team. From pre-project planning to contractor counseling and on-site technical assistance, we make sure you’re getting the very most out of our fabric-formed concrete solutions.Get in touch for a free consultation! You can call the Synthetex team at 1-800-253-0561 or 770-399-5051, chat with us at www.synthetex.com, or send us a message using our contact form. We look forward to hearing from you!

Submarine or offshore pipelines are vital for the oil and gas industry. They’re also challenging infrastructure to maintain, given the variety—and the volatility—of the underwater environments they may pass through.

A major ongoing cause of concern is the scour produced by waves and currents, which can undermine the stability and integrity of pipeline sections and result in sagging, backfilling, and outright structural failure.

Here at Synthetex, our HYDROTEX fabric-formed concrete can provide highly effective and durable protection or provide free-span corrections to underwater pipelines due to the costly effects of scour.

How Scour Impacts Submarine Pipelines

Coastal waves, long-range ocean and tidal currents, and violent, unpredictable wave and current action from marine storms such as extratropical cyclones are all significant sources of scour. Such water movement naturally erodes the seabed, with certain seafloor material—sand, mud, and silt, for example—more vulnerable than others.

A pipeline laid on the seabed is not only exposed to this “base-level” kind of seabed alteration and scour, but also provides an obstruction to water flow, resulting in the generation of vortices and shear stresses that introduce other mechanisms of seafloor erosion.

Scour holes can open below lengths of pipeline, and such holes that expand along the pipeline may result in extended sections of pipe elevated above the scoured-out seabed. Such “freespans” can modify and intensify the hydrodynamic stresses and load upon the pipeline. This may accelerate fatigue and wear and increase the likelihood of structural failure.

A free-spanning pipe may also sag into the scour hole. This can compromise the pipeline’s structural integrity, and also—by ultimately pinching off the action of scour as the sagging pipe approaches the seabed—promote backfilling that can lead to pipeline burial.

Scour Protection For Offshore Pipelines

Scour protection for underwater pipelines may take a variety of forms and designs, including the armoring of the seabed below the pipe as well as the pipe itself, or support structures installed below freespans to stabilize them and reduce hydrodynamic forces.

Specific materials used for offshore pipeline scour protection might include dumped rip-rap and prefabricated concrete mattresses or sandbags. Rock, gravel, or precast concrete can be expensive and logistically challenging to install, especially when trying to place it between the pipeline and seabed.

With HYDROTEX fabriforms, a more exact, elegantly simple, and long-lasting scour protection or free span correction for submarine pipelines becomes possible.

HYDROTEX Fabric-Formed Concrete for Underwater Pipeline Scour Protection and Free Span Correction

Our HYDROTEX fabric formworks are laid in place before being pumped in situ with fine aggregate concrete.  Alternatively, when subsea pumping of concrete isn’t the desired method of placement, our flexible, cabled Articulating Block mattresses can be pumped on a vessel’s deck and then lifted into place. Both methods afford great precision in the placement of mattresses, covers, sleeves, supports, and other concrete armor along pipeline bed contours, and also boosts the efficiency of the installation process. HYDROTEX products can be adapted for a vast array of environmental settings and pipeline designs, ensuring a completely customized solution.

From HYDROTEX Articulating Block Mats and Grout Bags to our widely varied Subsea Formworks, our fabric-formed, cast-in-place scour-protection solutions can be tightly installed over, under, and around pipelines by ROVs and/or divers and provide long-lasting, low-maintenance armor and support.

Whatever the size, scope, and location of your project—including pipeline protection in particularly rough and demanding marine environments—the Synthetex team will work closely with you to select the perfect fabriform solution. Our engineers can also provide consultation services to Certified contractors as well as on-site counsel during the installation process.

Learn More About HYDROTEX Scour Protection for Underwater Pipelines

We’re always more than happy to provide a consultation or project estimate on a scour-protection solution for your offshore pipeline project. You can get in touch with SYNTHETEX via our online contact form, or by ringing us at 1-800-253-0561 or 770-399-5051.

We look forward to hearing from you—and to providing the perfect scour protection for that critical subsea pipeline under your management!

As concern about the limited supply and carbon footprint of fossil fuels mounts, the world is seeing a major energy transition underway, with shifts toward renewable sources such as hydropower, wind power, solar power, and geothermal power. This is associated with an increased market for minerals, which means more mining—and thus a greater need for erosion and sediment control to support mining logistics while minimizing environmental and social impacts. The HYDROTEX fabric-formed concrete we offer here at Synthetex can very much be an important part of this equation.

The Burgeoning Demand for Energy Transition Metals

As a recent article in GreenBiz notes, this transition to a low-carbon energy future comes with increasing demand for raw materials in the form of the minerals that renewable-energy electricity generation demands. Copper, lithium, and cobalt are among the “energy transition metals” (ETMs) most fundamental to these technologies. “An electric car, for instance, requires six times the mineral input compared to a conventional car,” the authors—Samah El-Shahat and Musaab Almulla—explain, “while an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a typical gas-fired plant.”

With electric-car production projected to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming decades, resulting ramped-up use of lithium-ion batteries will be a significant driver of energy transition mineral (ETM) mining. The GreenBiz article points out that lithium extraction is “expected to see a considerable growth of about 40 times by 2040 to meet the Paris Agreement goals.” (The Paris Agreement is the international treaty adopted in 2015 on the heels of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris, France. It aims to combat climate change by limiting greenhouse-gas emissions in order to keep the increase in global mean temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.)

With the expansion of the mining sector as part of the current energy transition, mining companies will need to address their “large social and environmental footprints, which are coming under greater scrutiny as investors shift capital into ESG funds,” the GreenBiz article states.

The control of erosion and the management of toxins, byproducts, and sediment are fundamental to effective and environmentally responsible mining. HYDROTEX fabric-formed concrete is here to assist with these objectives.

Mining Erosion Protection & Sediment Control Solutions From Synthetex

From reinforcing embankments and sealing tunnels to lining channels and retention ponds, state-of-the-art HYDROTEX formworks can help mining facilities tackle any number of erosion- and sediment-control needs.  Additionally, we have solutions to protect and/or provide ballast to geomembranes in tailings impoundments.

The exceptional customizability of HYDROTEX fabriforms, backed up by the ease with which they can be transported and installed, make them first-rate solutions for the mining industry. Mines are complex operations, often large-scale and commonly situated in remote settings. Our geotextiles are tailor-made for such challenges!

HYDROTEX fabriforms can be custom-ordered for a wide variety of applications and dimensions. Transported in rolls, these products require lower freight costs than prefabricated concrete blocks, riprap, and other precast alternatives. They are also far simpler to install, without the need for heavy machinery and large crews. Laid in place for the perfect fit and easy adjustability, HYDROTEX fabriforms are then pumped in place with fine aggregate concrete.

Cheaper to transport, with very little laydown area needed, and easier to install, these fabric formworks nonetheless confer equal or greater protection against environmental and mechanical degradation and contamination as those prefab products. They’re incredibly durable and require minimal long-term maintenance.  Why are they more durable?  Well, the geotextile fabric forms allow for bleed off of water from the concrete mix.  This reduction in water and therefore lowering of the water:cement ratio leads to approximately doubling of the concrete compressive strength after pumping into the fabric formworks.

Learn More About HYDROTEX Solutions for Mining Erosion Control & Sediment Management

Among the specific HYDROTEX products perfect for mining applications are:

• HYDROTEX FilterBand
• HYDROTEX Uniform Section
• HYDROTEX Articulating Block
• HYDROTEX Filter Point
• Enviromat FX

Click on the above links for more details on each of these top-of-the-line HYDROTEX solutions. Please note that in channels that have lower flow, Synthetex can assist with a green channel option with the Enviromat FX. Utilizing a green solution can be of great benefit as it can assist with permitting. 

Turn to HYDROTEX for Mining Erosion & Sediment Control Solutions

Besides the exceptional quality and versatility of our HYDROTEX products, the Synthetex advantage means start-to-finish design support from our engineering team, training and technical support, including in the form of on-site consulting with regard to installation and construction needs. We’re here to make sure you get the most out of your HYDROTEX solution so it can perform superbly over the long haul!

To learn more about how HYDROTEX fabric-formed concrete can enhance your mining operations, reach out to the Synthetex team for a free consultation. You can get in touch with us here at the website, or by phone at 1-800-253-5061 or 770-399-5051.