Abstract This technical paper presents a unique comparison of geomembrane factory and field welded thermal seams for a large off-stream water reservoir project. The results of the comparison show that factory welded seams exhibit higher seam peel and shear strengths at yield, less variability, and more consistency than field welded thermal seams. In particular, the results show that factory seams are about 10% stronger than field seams in shear and about 9% stronger in peel strength at yield. More importantly, this resulted in 100% of the factory welded seams passing the project seam strength requirements even though the factory welding speed was 1.1–1.6 times faster than the field welding speed. Conversely, about 25% of the field welded seams did not pass the initial specified field seam shear strength requirement, which caused significant delays, scheduling, and other construction issues. As a result, the field seam shear strength requirement was reduced from 9.6 kN/m to 8.2 kN/m to increase the number of field seams that achieved project requirements. Because the geomembrane was primarily factory fabricated, there were about 78% less field seams on this project than if the geomembrane was entirely field fabricated.

中文翻译：

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土工膜工厂与现场热焊缝对比

摘要 本技术论文对大型外流水库项目的土工膜工厂和现场焊接热焊缝进行了独特的比较。比较结果表明，与现场焊接的热焊缝相比，工厂焊接的焊缝在屈服时表现出更高的焊缝剥离和剪切强度、更小的可变性和更高的一致性。特别是，结果表明，工厂接缝的剪切强度比现场接缝强约 10%，屈服剥离强度强约 9%。更重要的是，即使工厂焊接速度比现场焊接速度快 1.1-1.6 倍，这也导致 100% 的工厂焊缝通过了项目焊缝强度要求。相反，大约 25% 的现场焊缝没有通过最初指定的现场焊缝剪切强度要求，这导致了显着的延误，调度和其他施工问题。因此，现场接缝剪切强度要求从 9.6 kN/m 降低到 8.2 kN/m，以增加达到项目要求的现场接缝数量。由于土工膜主要是工厂制造的，与土工膜完全现场制造相比，该项目的现场接缝减少了约 78%。