GGU-GABION: Step 5 - Define material of gabion (Ex. 1)

Select the menu item "Editor 1/Material" and enter the values shown in the dialog box.

The program allows you adopt user-defined unit weights to be used in the analysis, if the gabion wall rests on a footing, for example. It is also possible to consider a "Buoyant gamma" if the gabion wall is constructed within groundwater. "Young's mod." designates the Young's modulus of the gabion material. This value is required for the structural analysis of the wall.

Using existing design practice, the internal stability of a gabion wall is often incorrectly analysed. Failure cases show, however, that improvements are required in this area. The paper therefore contains the demand:

"The internal stability of the gabion elements of the wall is to be verified numerically, or via loading tests.

The inner stability of an element is influenced mainly by

• the fill material and

• the wire mesh.

A reliable numerical determination of inner stability is barely possible, due to the complexity of interactions between the fill material and the wire mesh. If necessary, the verification concept of the DIN 1045 can be used, if an equivalent value for the design value of the concrete compressive strength of the gabion elements (fm,d) can be determined by modelling tests."

The program allows analysis of the internal stability to EC 2/DIN 1045-1 and DIN 4093 using this concrete compressive strength. Values for "fm,d" (design strength of the concrete) and "n-value for load distribution" are required here (see detailed explanation in “Theoretical principles: Analysis of internal stability”).