Renovation of quay walls to meet more demanding requirements: Italian experiences

Existing port structures often need to be upgraded to meet more demanding operational requirements caused by increasing ship size, deepening of the seabed and increasing crane dimensions and storage loads. When ports expand, upgrading is often preferable to the rebuilding of infrastructures in term of costs; however, the design of such works must take into account that the reliability of the existing structures is often inadequate according to the current codes, due to the low mechanical properties of the original materials and to their aging in the highly aggressive marine environment. The geotechnical engineering literature rarely addresses the problem of upgrading existing quay walls, even though such geotechnical structures are extremely challenging. This paper discusses the main issues involved in the geotechnical design for upgrading existing quay walls, through the presentation of some case histories drawn from past experiences in Italy