Gabion - Wikipedia

A gabion (from Italian gabbione meaning "big cage"; from Italian gabbia and Latin cavea meaning "cage") is a cage, cylinder, or cube, typically mesh, filled with solid material suitable to use in various civil engineering and military applications. Ballasts include rocks, sand, soil, used tires, and other recycled items.

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Among the most common civil engineering uses are erosion control, retaining walls, and impact attenuation; in the military gabions commonly protect forward operating bases and artillery firing positions against small arms and indirect fragmentary explosives. Applications include sleeping quarters, mess halls, checkpoints, and revetments for aircraft.

Design

The shape, proportion, and internal and external construction, reflect the use of each form of gabion.

Types:[1]

• Maccafierri: a box shaped gabion made out of galvanized steel, stainless steel, or PVC coated steel wire mesh.
• Bastion: a gabion lined with an internal membrane, typically of nonwoven geotextile, to permit the use of granular soil fill instead of rock.
• Mattress: a form of gabion designed to be laid flat singly rather than a stacked.[2]
• Trapion: a form of gabion with a trapezoidal cross-section, designed for stacking to give a sloped rather than stepped face.

Uses

Civil engineering

Leonardo da Vinci designed a type of gabion called a Corbeille Leonard ("Leonard[o] basket") for the foundations of the San Marco Castle in Milan.[3]

A box-shaped wire mesh gabion for erosion control, the most common civil engineering application, was refined in the late 19th century in Italy and patented as the Maccaferri gabion.[citation needed] it was used to stabilize shorelines, stream banks and slopes. Other uses evolved, including retaining walls, noise barriers, temporary flood walls, silt filtration from runoff, small dams, fish screening, channel lining, and stepped weirs, which enhance the rate of energy dissipation in a channel.[4]

The life expectancy of gabions depends on that of their wire. Galvanized steel wire is most common, but PVC-coated and stainless steel wire are also used. PVC-coated galvanized gabions have been estimated to last for 60 years.[5] Some gabion manufacturers guarantee a structural integrity of 50 years.[6]

In the United States, gabions were first used in stream erosion control projects beginning in .[7] More than 150 grade-control structures, bank revetments and channel deflectors were constructed on two U.S. Forest Service sites. Eventually, a large portion of the in-stream structures failed due to undermining and lack of structural integrity of the baskets. In particular, corrosion and abrasion of wires by movement of the streams’ bedload compromised the structures, which then sagged and collapsed into the channels. Other gabions were toppled into channels as trees grew atop their revetments, leveraging them toward the streams.

Gabions have also been used in building construction, as in the Dominus Winery in the Napa Valley, California, constructed between and . The exterior is formed by modular wire mesh gabions containing locally quarried stone, allowing air movement through the building and moderating interior temperatures.[8][9]

Military

Early gabions were round open-ended cages made from wickerwork filled with earth and used as military fortifications.[10]: 38  In one example, willow twigs were brought from East Lothian to make gabions to protect gun emplacements during the April siege of Edinburgh Castle.[11]

Such early military gabions were most often used to protect sappers and siege artillery gunners.[10]: 39  The wickerwork cylinders were light and could be carried relatively conveniently in the ammunition train, particularly when made in nesting diameters. In use they would be stood on end, staked in position, and filled. During the Crimean War, local shortages of brushwood led to use of scrap hoop-iron from hay bales, inspiring purpose-built sheet-iron gabions.[10]: 182 

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Today, gabions are used to protect forward operating bases (FOBs) against small arms and explosive, fragmentary, indirect fire such as mortar,l or artillery rounds. Applications include sleeping quarters, mess halls, anywhere large concentrations of unprotected soldiers might gather, blast walls, and aircraft revetments. A modern form is the Hesco bastion".

• A gabion breastwork (in background) protecting artillery at Fort Stedman in Virginia in the American Civil War
• Modern Hesco bastions

Impact attenuation

Gabions may be used for attenuating dynamic loads, such as those resulting from impacts by vehicles or rockfall.[12] Depending on what they are filled with, gabions may be highly deformable, dissipating impact forces. This has led to the use of recycled materials such as used tires and ballast from railway tracks to fill some rockfall protection embankments.[13][14]

See also

• Cellular confinement – Confinement system used in construction and geotechnical engineering, a small-scale mattress gabion used for roads, retaining walls, and protective structures.
• Hesco bastion – Flood control and military fortification barrier, a modernized version of the same concept
• Maccaferri gabion – Type of rock-filled cage, wire mesh gabions introduced into modern civil engineering
• Stepped spillway – Structure for energy dissipated release of flows from a dam or levee

References

How long will Galvanised Gabion Baskets last?

Arriving at a defined life expectancy of your galvanised steel gabion basket will depend on a number of factors influencing the potential corrosion of the steel. Time of Wetness - This denotes the length of time the metal is covered by water allowing the corrosion process to take place. Salt in the Air - The closer you live to the ocean, the more salt in the air. Airborne salinity increases the potential for corrosion to occur. Pollution in the air - The amount of sulfur dioxide in the air will contribute to the degradation of the galvanised coating.

In summary, it comes down to where the gabion baskets will be located. Thankfully, many studies have been done over the last 50 years to help paint an accurate picture of what to expect. View the below map below and find out which classification your property falls:

Corrosive Category C1
Corrosivity = Very Low
Locations = Desert zone

Corrosive Category C2
Corrosivity = Low
Locations = Temperate zone with low pollution & Desert zone

Corrosive Category C3
Corrosivity = Medium
Locations = Temperate zone with medium pollution & Subtropical and tropical zones with low pollution

It is worth noting that the GAA have recognised that in Australia, pollution is so low in most environments that it is generally considered that it can be ignored, other than for specific industrial applications or extreme traffic examples.

If you live in South East Queensland or Northern NSW, your property will be classified in corrosive category C2 or C3. There are other corrosive ratings however they have been excluded from this article as they are not relevant. If you wish to learn more about the different corrosive ratings of galvanised steel, I recommend reading the Atmospheric Corrosion Resistance of Hot Dip Galvanized Coatings available from the GAA website here.

The below graph shows the life expectancy before first maintenance is required. In a C3 category, it is 20 years and C2 category, it is 50+ years remembering that the coating thickness of the steel wire is 39.2 microns.

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