Drystone Retaining Walls: Design, Construction and Assessment [Paperback]

Take a Detailed Look at the Practice of Drystone Retaining Wall Construction

Drystone retaining walls make very efficient use of local materials, and sit comfortably in their environment. They make an important contribution to heritage and to the character of the landscape, and are loved by many people who value the skill and ingenuity that has gone into their construction, as well as simply how they look.

And yet, in engineering terms, they are complex. They can deform significantly as their loading changes and their constituent stones weather. This gives them ductilitythey deal with changes by adapting to them. In some ways, they behave like conventional concrete retaining walls, but in many ways they are better. They cannot be designed or assessed correctly unless these differences are understood.

 

• Explain the behavior of earth retaining structures



• Provide a theoretical framework for modeling the mechanical stability of a drystone retaining wall



• Outline reliable rules for constructing a drystone retaining wall



• Include charts to support the preliminary sizing of drystone retaining walls



• Examine the relevance of drystone in terms of sustainability



• Describe more advanced methods of analysis