Ongoing Geosynthetics Researches of GSI-Taiwan

GSI-Taiwan became as a GSI National member on July 2000. GSI-Taiwan was established based upon the Geosynthetic Laboratory of the Department of Civil Engineering, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan. This laboratory was established as a teaching and research laboratory in the early of 1994. Later, this laboratory was also served as a third-party laboratory to provide testing service for government agencies and industries in Taiwan. In addition, this laboratory also conducted research studies for industry to improve their products and to establish engineering database for their products. To ensure the quality of the service, this laboratory was recognized as a certified laboratory by the Chinese National Laboratory Accreditation (CNLA) and the Geosynthetic Accreditation Institute (GAI) in 1999 and 2000, respectively. At present, GSI-Taiwan laboratory has been accredited for more than seventy and thirty test methods by the CNLA and GAI-LAP, respectively. In addition to serve as a teaching laboratory and to provide third-party testing service, to conduct research study is another main objective of this laboratory. More than 40 research projects were conducted since the laboratory was established. In addition to the mechanical properties of geosynthetics, the durability and endurance properties of geotextiles, geogrids, and geopipes are also the main research areas. Details of on going research topics are discussed in the following paragraphs.