Laboratory Investigation of Geobag Revetment Performance in Rivers

Geobag (sand-filled geotextile bags) revetments have recently emerged as long-term riverbank protection measures in developing countries; however, their performance is still not well understood. The hydraulic stability of geobag revetments used for riverbank protection has been studied within an extensive laboratory programme to improve our understanding of the complete failure processes of geobag revetments. A 1:10 scale distorted physical model was tested in a laboratory flume, comparing a range of different construction methods and revetment side slopes, subjected to different flow loading. The results indicate that whilst failure mechanisms are highly dependent on water depth and revetment slope, the construction method had no noticeable impact. It was thus concluded that the dominating factor is the friction between individual geobags, which itself is dependent on bag longitudinal overlap rather than a specific construction method.