Armater was introduced in the United States in 1986 after having been used successfully in Europe for several years. In 1983, it received a prestigious innovation award from the Union of Public Works Professionals in France.

Armater is a three-dimensional, semi-rigid geomatrix made of non-woven, polyester fabric. It is permeable, lightweight and rot-proof and provides virtually permanent erosion control.

The hexagons that make up Armaterts honeycomb design are four inches deep and have 8-inch sides. After it has been placed on a surface, it can be filled with native soils, sand, gravel, pea gravel or other aggregate. Surface water flow is impeded and slowed by the raised edges of the hexagons.

The initial application of Armater in the United States was at the Elephant Butte Irrigation District in New Mexico. The district furnishes irrigation water from the Rio Grande River for thousands of acres of farm land and electrical power for several cities.

The district’s hundreds of miles of earthen canals were constantly exposed to running water released from dams for irrigation, and presented a continuing erosion problem. The district’s maintenance chief found the option of lining the canals with concrete cost prohibitive, and opted to use Armater instead.

In Elephant Butte, the Armater was spread out and anchored across a two- to four-foot ledge and down the slope. The panels were joined by a commercial stapler. The honeycombs were filled with a mixture of baseball to football-size rocks and soil to keep the banks stable.

Thus, the Armater can be installed quickly and with a minimum of labor. Once installed and filled in, it acts like a heavy, immovable blanket that lays over the erosion prone area.

Armater has been used on a variety of projects ranging from lining an earthen storm drainage channel alongside Interstate 25 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, to helping protect part of an underground AT&T fiber optic cable linking El Paso, Texas, with Los Angeles, California.

On the latter project, heavy rains continually eroded the soil that had been used to fill in the cable trench in an area with a steep slope. Engineers used Armater to stabilize the slope and prevent the soil that had been used to cover the cable from sliding.