Biopolymers

For eco-environmental concept in geosynthetics application fields, “Green” revolution is rapidly increasing in every construction sites e.g., green structure, green installation, green industry etc. especially between construction and society’s needs. Furthermore, although durability of geosynthetics should be emphasized for long-term service period, durability controlled mechanism could be required to fulfil the short-term degradability purpose for green geosynthetics. “Green Geosynthetics” can be defined as following: green geosynthetics are made of eco-environmental biodegradable polymeric resins or natural materials and they must maintain their needed performance such as durability, design strength, hydraulic property etc. during service period in the application field. Then, after sevice period they should be degraded no harmful state in the soil structures. In this study, concept of green geosynthetics was introduced in terms of biodegradability. Development of green geosynthetics, its background and technical concerns were discussed through some research results of PLA (polylactic acid) specimens. Test method for biodegradability of PLA (polylactic acid) as a green geosynthetics were considered and suggested based on composting method. Finally, the rest result shows that the concept of biodegradability for green geosynthetics is available in the environmental application. Through the overall environmental performance analysis of biodegradability as green geosynthetics, it is seen that biodegradable mechanism of is possible to control theoretically and to control bio-degradability of PLA used green geosynthetics. However, more restricted design technology must be adopted for this and more specific composition and selection of optimum additives of PLA blending should be determined for the quality control of PLA related geosynthetics. To evaluate the biodegradability of green geosynthetics performance, new test methods should be introduced and the needed evaluation items should be selected by considering influence parameters on the long-term performance under real field installation conditions.