Experimental study on scouring of traditional and new types of gabion mat cells

The traditional gabion mesh mats use the mesh as the partition, which requires a lot of manpower to construct. A new type of gabion mesh mats is designed with cemented gravel latticework as the partition to save labor and shorten the construction period. The scouring tests of two types of gabion mesh mats units are carried out. The characteristics of inferior-diameter ratio (IDR) particle loss, flow rate slowing down and washed-out area with IDR between the traditional and new gabion mesh units are analyzed and compared. The scouring tests on the new type of gabion mesh units with different numbers of cemented rubble lattice partitions under the same size are further conducted. The test results show that loss of the inferior-diameter particles, the ability to slow down the scouring flow rate and the erosion area of traditional and new gabion mesh units increase with the increase of the inferior-diameter ratio. The better inferior-diameter ratio is betwwen 10% and 15% for the traditional gabion mesh, and between 10% and 20% for the new gabion mesh. For the same size of test unit, when the number of cemented gravel lattice partitions in the new gabion mats increases from 1 to 2, the loss of inferior-diameter particles and the erosion area can be reduced significantly. The increase of the number of cemented gravel lattice partitions has no significant reduction effects. The test results may provide a reference for promoting the design and construction of new gabion mesh riparian structures.