A Driven Sheet Pile Advantage

The ability to install driven sheet piles on an angle, or batter, gives them a distinct advantage with respect to their ability to carry lateral loads. Batter sheet piles carry lateral loads primarily in axial compression and/or tension while vertical deep foundations carry lateral loads in shear and bending.

When subjected to lateral loading, batter sheet piles will therefore generally have a greater capacity and be subject to smaller deformations than vertical sheet piles of the same dimensions and material. Large shear and moment loads induced at the pile head have been a source of performance problems with batter sheet piles in some cases. However, these problems can be mitigated by appropriate design and detailing of the pile-structure connection.

Until the 1990s, batter sheet piles were a common means for carrying lateral loads, particularly when the lateral loads were large, there was a large unsupported length, or there were weak soils at the ground surface. Examples of such situations include seismic design of bridges and design of marginal wharfs and other port and harbor structures. In the 1990s, following the poor performance of batter sheet piles in a series of earthquakes, some engineers began advising against the use of batter sheet piles. However, once the reason for the poor performance of batter sheet piles was understood, engineers developed design strategies to address these problems.

Using these strategies, batter sheet piles have once again become an important weap on in the engineer's arsenal for designing foundations subject to lateral loads.

This article comes from jdfields edit released