Geotechnical and historical aspects on the collapse of the Tiber embankment walls in the centre of Roma (1870–1900)

This paper deals with the issues related to the construction of the Tiber’s embankment walls between years 1870–1926. The embankment walls (muraglioni) were designed by Raffaele Canevari to mitigate the effects of the river inundation in the city centre of Roma. After the flood of December 1900, several portions of the Anguillara and Alberteschi sections collapsed. The aim of this work is to investigate whether the causes of the collapse can be traced back to design approaches of the time, lacking from a point of view of the hydro-mechanical interaction of the soil in the evaluation of the total earth pressure. In particular, designed calculations are also revised accounting for more advance soil phenomena laws, based on Terzaghi effective stress and the effects of scouring and erosion. Some assumptions have been made on the mechanical characteristics of the backfill soils and on the relying on foundation materials.