Geosynthetic Bunker Liners: A Proposed Design Methodology for Golf Course Improvement

Geosynthetic bunker liners have been used in North American golf course new construction and remediation projects for approximately five years although the requisite geotechnical engineering and geosynthetics knowledge has been in use for decades in more traditional civil engineering applications (e.g. road construction, shoreline protection, etc.). There would likely be more widespread use of and specification of geosynthetic bunker liners if there existed a greater fundamental understanding of the science behind their performance. In this context, a `bunker liner' is actually a relatively thick and highly permeable product specifically intended to entrain and stabilize bunker sand (with the primary economic benefit of reduced labor costs associated with sand washouts caused by rainfall or irrigation watering). These products are substantially different from the more traditional, thinner, needlepunched non-woven geotextile products. Traditional geotextiles have been used in the past but with mixed to poor results. Today's commercially available bunker liner products all vary somewhat in their appearance and design but have all demonstrated an ability to function successfully for their intended purpose at one level or another (i.e. sand stabilization, subgrade separation, filtration and drainage), at least on a short-term basis. Although the immediate success of these products is generally recognized, there has been little technical development toward the understanding of their functionality or how to accomplish bunker design with the use of these products and in various different situations. In the effort to give structure to the geotechnical aspects of bunker liner design, this article proposes a design methodology for bunker liners as it relates to their long-term drainage and filtration performance.