Gabion Basket Retaining Wall Design

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Gabion basket retaining wall design.

The design of both types is based on the same principles. With traditional procedures for retaining wall design. Gabion baskets are a mass retaining system thus the higher the area that needs retaining the heavier the wall must be. Gabion walls are most commonly filled with rocks and the voids between them are filled in with backfill materials such as silts and clay or soft clay.

Larger gabion retaining wall solutions use thicker gabions at the base to spread the foundation load and improve resistance to overturning and sliding. Wednesday webinars september 9th s webinar will be an aia registered 1lu hsw course on utilizing gabions and garden walls in the biophilic design approach to architecture. Design begins with the selection of trail dimensions for a typical vertical cross section through the wall. In constructing walls individual gabions are used as construction blocks.

Gabion basket retaining walls are a gravity type retaining wall that uses stone filled wire baskets. Gabion basket retaining walls allow water to escape if large stone is used to fill the baskets. Gabion walls may be stepped on either the front or the back soil side face as illustrated in figure 1. In general for every 1m increase in wall height the bottom row basket depth should be increased by half a metre.

Large gabion walls with step slopes behind and or buildings above will require an engineers design as the simple 2 1 stability ratio no longer applies. Retaining wall design takes into account site conditions soil types and loads above and behind the retaining wall. When the gabion retaining wall is subject to a additional surcharges from a driveway or other loads the design will most likely increase the depth of the gabions to handle the higher expected loads. An engineer s design will consider the design limit states and specify the dimensions of the toe and base for your wall.

A gabion may be defined as a heavy duty rectangular wire mesh basket filled with rocks and used to construct walls and other earth retaining or erosion control structures. Gabion retaining wall design guidelines most gabion retaining walls don t need concrete foundations depending on the wall height a 2 to 4 layer of compacted 1 road base crushed from either blue metal or basalt rock is all that is required for most gabion walls. They are very similar to our concrete block design but can be more economical. The design does not consider that the gabion mesh provides improvement to stability.

The design of gabion retaining walls is based on the mass of the contained stone or rock being able to resist the disturbing forces due to soil and external loadings. We are excited to now be offering a complete line of green wall products to be used as a standalone product or in conjunction with our gabion baskets. The standard design for a gabion wall is a pyramid.