Reinforced Stone Gravity Retaining wall

[Gradstructengineer]

Hi all,

I have to design a stone (grouted) gravity retaining wall (1.1m tall). I had designed it in such a way that the resisting moment due to self weight was much higher than the overturning moment due to soil pressure but now the client would like to fix fencing over the wall. With the horizontal load of someone pushing against the fencing (~0.75kN/m), I'm thinking the stone wall cannot sustain it without the stone wall crumbling under the horizontal loads. Could you please share where I can find any material regarding reinforced stone gravity wall design? preferably Australian standards if any.

thanks in advance

 

[dhengr]

Gradstructengineer:
And next, he will want the fence to resist a car impact. Then when you have the wall half built, he’ll want to increase the wall height to 3m. Just keep building the same thing, what’s the difference, he says? The fence posts are stl. pipe at 8 or 10' o/c, right? Build footings and piers at these locations, and embed the pipe posts in the piers to take all of the fence loading. Then build the stone wall around and in front of the piers, with the pier facing being only one stone thick. A good stone mason will just fill all the joints and voids btwn. stones with mortar and then tool and clean up the top and face joints btwn, stones. I don’t know that this is really called a grouted stone wall, but it is certainly not a dry laid stone wall. I’d call it a gravity stone wall laid in mortar. I’ve also seen them done where they form the wall faces, fill the forms with stones and then pump in flowable concrete, mortar or grout. They strip the front forms quick enough so they can still work the face joints, and clean up the face.

 

[Tomfh]

It's pretty common to put a balustrade on top of such a wall. Add the balustrade load to the wall design. The fence posts can be concreted/grouted into the wall during construction. Alternatively the posts can be cored in later. You can add some reinforcement at the pier locations if you're concerned about the wall rupturing.

 

[Gradstructengineer]

Thank you for your responses, the client wants the option to lay the fencing in the future, its not part of the retaining wall at the moment. I have provided wall reinforcement (N16-250 vertical laid centrally with N16-250 horizontal bars) to provide some tensile strength to the wall, hopefully this should do it.

 

[Craig_H]

Perhaps I am not picturing this correctly, but how exactly does one place reinforcing bars around rough stone masonry? Is this a reinforced concrete or concrete masonry wall faced with stone?