Gabion Basket Retaining Wall Design

The rock voids within the gabion baskets allows for free drainage of the retained soils and requires a filter fabric be placed between the gabion wall and the backfill soil interface.

Gabion basket retaining wall design. The standard design for a gabion wall is a pyramid. Gabion basket retaining walls are a gravity type retaining wall that uses stone filled wire baskets. An engineer s design will consider the design limit states and specify the dimensions of the toe and base for your wall. Gabion basket retaining walls allow water to escape if large stone is used to fill the baskets.

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. Gabion baskets are a mass retaining system thus the higher the area that needs retaining the heavier the wall must be. 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. The design does not consider that the gabion mesh provides improvement to stability.

The design of both types is based on the same principles. Gabion walls may be stepped on either the front or the back soil side face as illustrated in figure 1. 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. In general for every 1m increase in wall height the bottom row basket depth should be increased by half a metre.

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. Design begins with the selection of trail dimensions for a typical vertical cross section through the wall. Geo tex geo textile filter fabric is a vital component of any gabion retaining wall project. 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.

With traditional procedures for retaining wall design. Retaining wall design takes into account site conditions soil types and loads above and behind the retaining wall. In constructing walls individual gabions are used as construction blocks. 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.

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. 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. They are very similar to our concrete block design but can be more economical.