Gabion

A gabion (from Italian gabbione meaning "big cage"; from Italian gabbia and Latin cavea meaning "cage") 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.

For erosion control, caged riprap is used. For dams or in foundation construction, cylindrical metal structures are used. In a military context, earth- or sand-filled gabions are used to protect sappers, infantry, and artillerymen from enemy fire.

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.

The most common civil engineering use of gabions was refined and patented by Gaetano Maccaferri in the late 1800s in Sacerno, Emilia Romagna and used to stabilize shorelines, stream banks or slopes against erosion. Other uses include retaining walls, noise barriers, temporary flood walls, silt filtration from runoff, for small or temporary/permanent dams, river training, or channel lining. They may be used to direct the force of a flow of flood water around a vulnerable structure.

Gabions are also used as fish screens on small streams. Gabion stepped weirs are commonly used for river training and flood control; the stepped design enhances the rate of energy dissipation in the channel, and it is particularly well-suited to the construction of gabion stepped weirs.

A gabion wall is a retaining wall made of stacked stone-filled gabions tied together with wire. Gabion walls are usually battered (angled back towards the slope), or stepped back with the slope, rather than stacked vertically.

Gabion baskets have some advantages over loose riprap because of their modularity and ability to be stacked in various shapes. Gabions have advantages over more rigid structures, because they can conform to subsidence, dissipate energy from flowing water and resist being washed away, and they drain freely. Their strength and effectiveness may increase with time in some cases, as silt and vegetation fill the interstitial voids and reinforce the structure. They are sometimes used to prevent falling stones from a cut or cliff endangering traffic on a thoroughfare.

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Wikipedia