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Retaining wall Buttress details.


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Hi All,

 

Me again :P...

 

I'm currently building a retaining wall which will be approximately a scale 15 ft in height (plus a scale 4ft wall at top) and 400ft long, at what intervals should it have buttresses and how wide would each one be?

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Well that is an open question. I dare say if I was designing one in reinforced concrete it wouldn't need any buttresses, just a few fancy expansion joints. If it is all about 'atmosphere' you need to consider the period that are you modelling and possibly the locality. In real life you would need to consider whether there is competent rock. If there is rock then the wall is either superfluous or purely decorative

 

There are two approaches that you can try. You can look at existing kits and copy their geometry or you can look at pictures of some real life walls. You have some pictures already of your Heaton Railway Station project in your other thread? I guess these walls are holding back 'Boulder Clay'.

 

If you want to see what you can do with existing kits there is some guidance in my own Blog.

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/880/entry-8937-mind-the-gap/

 

Regards

 

Ray

 

 

 

 

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As already said its very much horses for courses, you want buttresses every 10ft you can have buttresses every ten foot, if you don't want any buttresses then don't have any.

 

If you want relieving arches have relieving arches, if you want battered walls have battered walls (although I think its a guiven that most retaining walls have some kind of slope on them - but I could be wrong).

 

I'd look around the area you are modelling to see what the real railway used and then adapt that. As always in such cases my rule is generally if it looks right it will be (or at least it will be for me).

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So much would depend on what type of rock/soil/clay existed in the ground behind the retaining wall and the period it was built. The soft clay of London would yield different solutions to sandstone in the East Midlands, for example.

 

As Rovex suggests, find somewhere similar in geology etc. to where you are modelling and copy it. You might even find a rock cutting, with a bit of brick or stone infill in many places, with no real retaining wall as such.

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Thanks folks, very useful.

 

Heaton is interesting because the walls are curved, not sure why that would be, but was planning on a conventional straight battered wall with a vertical wall on the top.

 

As for Geology, havn't got the foggiest!!! My layout is set in NER somewhere.. but still haven't decided even if it's coastal or inshore!!

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Think of the curved retaining wall as an inverted arch. Brick work only really works in compression. By curving the wall the designer is able to keep the lower courses of brickwork in compression and hence prevent them sliding out over each other.

 

Regards Ray

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Just looked at Scarborough as I knew it had a long (stone) retaining wall, while the S'ough one is a bit lower than mine ( 10-12 feet I guess) it's not massively so, and is unbuttressed...

 

So mines going to be based off that and unbuttressed with a slight batter.

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