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Detectable tape or Underground warning tape is a conductive tape typically applied over buried utilities made of non-conductive materials such as
Detectable tape or Underground warning tape is a conductive tape typically applied over buried utilities made of non-conductive materials such as plastic
Plastics are a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials that use polymers as a main ingredient. Their plasticity makes it possible for plastics to be moulded, extruded or pressed into solid objects of various shapes. This adaptab ...
, fiberglass
Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass cl ...
, or cement
A cement is a binder, a chemical substance used for construction that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to bind them together. Cement is seldom used on its own, but rather to bind sand and gravel (aggregate) together. Cement m ...
. It is used because most utility location
Utility location is the process of identifying and labeling public utility mains that are underground. These mains may include lines for telecommunication, electricity, electricity distribution, natural gas, cable television, optical fibers, fibe ...
methods work best on conductive objects, and hence may easily miss structures made of non-conductive materials.
The tape also serves as a physical warning. If uncovered during digging, it alerts the user to an underground object that might be damaged by further excavation. To aid in this, it is typically colored to reflect the nature of the buried object that it is protecting.
It is common for construction specifications to mandate the use of such tape.
The conductive material in detectable tapes is typically aluminium
Aluminium (aluminum in AmE, American and CanE, Canadian English) is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately o ...
, but there have been studies investigating replacing this with a material which is both magnetic and conductive, to make it detectable to a wider variety of utility location techniques.
See also
* Underground Service Alert, an organization that specializes in marking underground utilities.References
{{reflist Color codes Public utilities Subterranea (geography)