To design permanent reinforced structures, the short or long term mechanical behaviour of geotextiles must be well known . Different tests – conventional tensile and non standard creep tests – are performed on four different geotextiles commonly used in the civil engineering construction. Two types of materials are used : polyester and polypropylene also differing by their structure : woven and non-woven. The environment of the geotextile is considered “free” and “confined”. The confined configuration is obtained by a pressure applied on a dry fine sand layer placed o both sides of the geotextile. A special creep cell has been used and improved to perform confined tests. Confined tensile and creep test results are presented and discussed. This discussion is led in relation with the type of material and structure and with the in-isolation and in-soil configuration. The main results concern the stress-strain behaviour of the geotextiles and some recommendations are proposed for the short or long time behaviour in design.
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