Specification

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials is known as AASHTO. This organization was established by the State DOT's to work towards common goals. AASHTO consists of professionals from each of the states' highway and transportation departments. They are responsible for assigning route numbers for the U.S. route system. AASHTO's primary functions include: Advocating for transportation issues in Washington; facilitating information sharing between the State Dot's through meetings, workshops and the Internet; and developing globally recognized transportation engineering guides, standards and software.

One of those standards is AASHTO M288. AASHTO M288-06 is published within its two-volume "Standard Specifications for Transportation Materials and Methods of Sampling and Testing". US Fabrics offers geotextiles that satisfy AASHTO requirements. A US Fabrics' AASHTO selection guide is available in a link at the bottom of this page.

How AASHTO M288 Works

M288-06 covers six geotextile applications: Subsurface Drainage, Separation, Stabilization, Permanent Erosion Control, Sediment Control and Paving Fabrics. However, AASHTO M288-06 is not a design guideline. It is the engineer's responsibility to choose a geotextile for the application that takes into consideration site-specific soil and water conditions. When site conditions are unknown, engineers can refer to AASHTO M288-06 Survivability Default Classes for guidance.

Survivability is divided into 3 Classes: Class (1) being the most severe and Class (3) being the less severe. Each Class is then subdivided according to elongation. This offers a choice of Non-woven geotextiles or Woven geotextiles for each Class. If an elongation is not specified, in many cases a woven is the user's best options since they are typically less expensive than nonwoven geotextiles. For certain applications hydraulic properties are included in AASHTO M288-06.

Below is a link to a list of US Fabrics geotextiles that satisfy the AASHTO M288-06 specifications. This web page is provided as a source of basic information on AASHTO specifications. Products and specifications can change without notice. Always verify the geotextile meets the specification for the specific project you are bidding.