Repairing Damage Caused by Burrowing Animals in Embankments: A Sustainable Proposal

Abstract

Animal burrowing along riverbanks has a negative impact on the hydraulic performance, and can have severe consequences on the structural integrity, of levees. Hence, as soon as burrows are detected during monitoring activities, it is strongly recommended that interventions are taken within the shortest possible time to mitigate disaster risk. The two most common engineering interventions used to repair the embankments (i.e., the excavation of the area with the following backfill or the injection of a low pressure flowable grout) may cause disadvantages and the weakening of the embankment because of the backfill soil lower compaction—which involves also the uncertainty of the complete filling—or piping and interface problems that may be encouraged by discontinuities of mechanical and hydraulic characteristics after injections of the low pressure grout. In this preliminary study, the possibility of injections of lime treated soil was investigated as a sustainable compromise proposal between the two mentioned interventions; oedometer tests on lime treated specimens of soils from the Po River embankment were carried out in order to study the effects of lime on the compressibility of less compacted soil compared to more compacted raw ones.