Nonwoven geotextiles have been widely used in geotechnical and environmental engineering applications for separation, filtration, and drainage. However, the literature reports that geotextiles may exhibit resistance to water penetration at initial wetting. Despite the initial wettability deficiency tends to disappear once wetted, the wetting problems of the fabric could deeply disturb the drainage system operation, particularly in applications in which geotextiles may perform for a considerable time in an unsaturated condition and under wetting and drying cycles, like capillary barriers and thin cover layers. Nowadays, only EN 13562 requires the unsaturated behavior evaluation of a geotextile subjected to hydrostatic pressure. Nonwoven geotextiles specimens generally present a specific behavior with a different wet area, even if the test results do not have a great variation. This process is governed by many geotextile intrinsic characteristics beyond polymer, as geotextile structure and the manufacturing process. The scope of this paper is to discuss the behavior of nonwoven geotextiles in these tests, comparing the specimen wet area registered in hydrostatic pressure tests.
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