YIELD OF SCRATCHED GEOMEMBRANES

In this paper, it is demonstrated that geomembranes that have a stress -strain curve with a yield peak, such as high-density polyethylene (HD PE) geomembranes, yield at a tensile strain that is significantly infl uenced by scratches on the surface of the geomembrane. It is shown tha t scratched HDPE geomembranes can exhibit yield al strains that are on e-third to one-half the yield strain of intact geomembranes. The metho d presented in this paper makes it possible to quantify the reduction in HDPE geomembrane yield strain due to scratches as a function of the scratch depth and the geomembrane thickness. Alternatively, the metho d can be used to select the thickness of an HDPE geomembrane for a giv en required yield strain when a certain scratch depth is expected.