RETAINING WALLS AND SLOPE STABILISATION

ALEN JOSEPH JAMES MASAP

BUILDING MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION,S-3

Retaining walls are structures designed to restrain soil to a slope that it would not naturally keep to (typically a steep, near-vertical or vertical slope).

Types of retaining wall

• Gravity.• Cantilevered.• Sheet piling.• Bored pile.• Anchored.• Soil nailing.• Soil-strengthened. • Mechanical stabilization.

They are used to bound soils between two different elevations often in areas of terrain possessing undesirable slopes or in areas where the landscape needs to be shaped severely and engineered for more specific purposes like hillside farming or roadway overpasses.

gravity retaining wall

A  gravity retaining wall that relies solely on it’s own weight to stand up is called a gravity wall.Cantilever retaining walls are constructed of reinforced concrete. They consist of a relatively thin stem and a base slab.

Cantilever retaining walls

A counterfort retaining wall is a cantilever wall with counterforts, or buttresses, attached to the inside face of the wall to further resist lateral thrust.

counterfort retaining wall

Concrete crib walls are gravity retaining walls, constructed from interlocking, precast, concrete components. They are filled with free draining material and earth backfill to eliminate the hazards of hydrostatic pressure building up behind the wall.

A gabion  is a cage, cylinder, or box filled with rocks, concrete, or sometimes sand and soil for use in civil engineering, road building, military applications and landscaping.

Gabion wallcrib walls

 Reinforced Earth wall consist of alternating layers of granular backfill, and linear metallic, high-adherence soil reinforcing strips or ladders to which a modular precast concrete facing is attached.  Its strength and stability are derived from the frictional interaction between the granular backfill and the reinforcements, resulting in a permanent and predictable bond that creates a unique composite construction material.

Soil nailing Sheet piling