Revetments, or revêtements (the original French word, meaning something to re-cloth or re-cover), have a variety of meanings in architecture, engineering and art history. In stream restoration, river engineering or coastal management, they are sloping structures placed on banks or cliffs in such a way as to absorb the energy of incoming water. In military engineering they are structures, again sloped, formed to secure an area from artillery, bombing, or stored explosives. In architecture they are a variety of structures, normally vertical, used to retain a wall, or sometimes just to decorate it. River or coastal revetments are usually built to preserve the existing uses of the shoreline and to protect the slope, as defence against erosion. For other meanings see below.
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Many revetments are used to line the banks of freshwater rivers, lakes, and man-made reservoirs, especially to prevent damage during periods of floods or heavy seasonal rains (see riprap). Many materials may be used: wooden piles, loose-piled boulders[1] or concrete shapes,[2] or more solid banks.
According to the U.S. National Park Service, and referring mostly to their employment in the American Civil War, a revetment is defined as a "retaining wall constructed to support the interior slope of a parapet. Made of logs, wood planks, fence rails, fascines, gabions, hurdles, sods, or stones, the revetment provided additional protection from enemy fire, and, most importantly, kept the interior slope nearly vertical. Stone revetments commonly survive. A few log revetments have been preserved due to high resin pine or cypress and porous sandy soils. After an entrenchment was abandoned, many log or rail revetments were scavenged for other uses, causing the interior slope to slump more quickly. An interior slope will appear more vertical if the parapet eroded with the revetment still in place."[3]
Revetment can be used as a term for a retaining wall, or just for the covering of a wall. In particular the term is used for stone slabs or decorated ceramic plaques used as the outer facing layer of a wall, especially in Ancient Roman architecture. These may or may not have a structural function in the internal construction of the wall, and may be essentially decorative. Marble or terracotta was used, the latter often decorated in moulded reliefs.[4] Revetment is also a term used for a riza or decorated metal cover for most, typically all but the face and perhaps hands, of an Eastern Orthodox icon.
The wooden revetments are made of thin wooden planks against other sticks of wood. They are not the best of coastal erosion preventing resources but can still help with easing coastal erosion. The water passes through the wooden planks making the water not crash against the cliff face or any other face.
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