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Retaining wall is an important structure of any infrastructure generally used to restrain soil. These are often used in 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. Retaining walls can be of concrete, brick/stone masonry, or even timber based on the material used. These can be a gravity wall, RCC cantilever, counterfort, and buttresses retaining wall depending upon the resistance to the load coming on it. Modern retaining walls like anchor wall, reinforced soil or nailed wall, and Gabion wall are also popular in recent construction scenario. A Gabion wall is a gravity wall having advantageous points such as easy drainage, cheaper, flexible (differential settlement can be tolerated), speedy work, use of local materials etc. Gabion retaining wall is a very effective type of retaining structure, especially in a mountainous region and rainy weather due to its flexibility, permeability, and ease of construction.

The primary purpose of gabion retaining wall is to provide lateral movement of soil or rock in order to control the active earth pressure and also resist the transverse load in case of gravity retaining wall which are settled and stabilized by their weight. Gabion retaining walls are designed to hold back soil for many purposes, including reducing soil erosion, making sloped areas more functional and improving drainage. Gabion retaining walls can also be used for decorative purposes in home landscaping.

Gabion retaining walls are constructed using gabion baskets that are placed upon each other and tied securely in order to form monolithic massive wall structure. Gabions are wire-stone element in the shape of hexagonal or cuboids made of wire mesh with double or triple twisting, filled with local boulders or quarry stone. Retaining walls made of concrete or brick will not be permeable as water will not be able to pass through the wall. Also efficient drainage is essential for retaining walls. This makes gabion baskets the ideal material to build retaining walls as gabions are highly permeable and are not vulnerable to drainage issues. Not only do gabion baskets create permeable retaining walls that prevent soil erosion but can also create low-maintenance decorative features that will enhance the look of any landscape. These can be built with local gabion stones to seamlessly fit in with their surroundings. Plus, gabion cages are also sympathetic to nature, allowing vegetation to grow through the baskets.

Retaining wall design, takes into account, site conditions, soil types and loads above and behind the retaining wall. Larger gabion retaining wall solutions use thicker gabions at the base to spread the foundation load and improve resistance to overturning and sliding. The retaining wall toe prevents the gabion wall sliding forwards, the depth of the toe needs to increase as the wall gets bigger. When building gabions on softer soils, both the depth of the toe and the size of the base needs to be increased to spread the load over a wider area. The life expectancy of gabions depends on the lifespan of the wire, not on the contents of the basket. The structure will fail when the wire fails. Galvanized steel wire is most common, but PVC-coated and stainless steel wire are also used. PVC-coated galvanized gabions have been estimated to survive for 60 years.

Gabion walls are versatile and sturdy structures that have gained popularity in various construction and landscaping projects. They play important role in construction of roads, flood controlling works, canal linings and hydraulic works. Gabion retaining wall occupy good ratio with respect to cost and effectiveness and also have low environmental impact conditions because the ease of placement, casting is easy to be handle and foundations work can easily carry out and somehow good aesthetics.

Advantages of Gabion Retaining Wall

The gabion retaining wall has the outstanding advantages of good flexibility, strong durability, high strength, strong permeability, ecological environmental protection, strong reliability, low cost, beautiful appearance and so on.

Flexibility

The most important advantage of stone cage is good flexibility, each unit and the whole has a strong flexibility. Each element has a different settlement deformation. The utility model is especially suitable for the section where the foundation is unstable and the retaining wall is eroded by water or waves, which results in the settlement of the structure. It can allow settlement, distortion, bending, and can adapt to different ground shapes without affecting the integrity of the structure.

Durability

The stone cage is made of high-strength wire mesh, which is filled with hard stones. Many stone cages are connected together to form a solid integral structure, which can bear certain structural displacement and keep the structural integrity and good durability.

High strength

Stone cage with resistance to earth pressure or water erosion force, with a certain grid tensile strength, corrosion resistance.

Highly permeable

Stone cage can freely pervious, in the stone cage before and after will not produce water head, water drainage mainly rely on infiltration and evaporation. No additional drainage system is required. In addition, the soil can be filled in the pores between the cages, plants can grow in the cages, can also enhance drainage.

Integrity

The stone cage has a unique integrity, all the elements of the cage are interconnected, when the settlement occurs, the whole cage structure may absorb and absorb part of the deformation, can minimize the impact of local damage.

Ecological and environmental protection

Stone cage use natural stones to maintain stability and provide strength, and can be combined with greening, accelerate the restoration of vegetation, ecological and environmental protection.

Low cost

The stone cage retaining wall is very economical, the construction is simple, the equipment needed is less, hardly needs the large-scale mechanical equipment, to the worker quality request is lower, to the foundation adaptiveness is strong, the required block stone can be natural block stone or the block stone in the abandoned side excavated by engineering. In addition, the stone cage requires little maintenance.

Beauty

Compared with traditional masonry structure, stone cage can produce good visual effect. In fact, the longer the Gabion retaining wall is built, the better it will blend with the vegetation, and even be completely integrated into the surrounding natural environment.