Benefits of sheet pile

A sheet pile is a relatively long, slender column, provided to offer support or to resist forces, made of preformed material having a predetermined shape and size that can be physically inspected prior to and during installation, which is installed by impact hammering, vibrating or pushing into the earth.

Quality

Sheet pile are a total engineering solution. The design, installation and quality assurance that are a part of each sheet pile combine to eliminate guesswork and produce a known, reliable and cost effective product that can accommodate a wide variety of subsurface conditions.

Sheet pile consist of natural materials or pre-manufactured structural shapes built to precise tolerances utilizing high strength materials and reliable quality control. All sheet pile conform to ASTM standards. Their quality is consistent from the first pile to the last and can be seen and verified prior to installation.

Sheet pile maintain their shape during installation. They do not bulge in soft soil conditions and are typically not susceptible to damage from the installation of subsequent piles. Many hollow-section piles can be visually inspected after installation to assure integrity. Most solid-section piles are uniform in section and can be dynamically inspected to verify integrity.

The pile driving process can be easily modeled prior to installation to determine adequate and economic equipment selection. Static or Dynamic testing can confirm load carrying capacities of installed piles. Dynamic testing can easily confirm proper hammer performance and its affect on the pile. Many modern hammers have impact velocity measurement devices permanently installed, providing a very high level of quality control.

Cost Effective

Sheet pile are usually the most cost effective deep foundation solution. You pay only for what you need. There are no hidden extra costs or added expenses for site clean-up. The wide variety of materials and shapes available for sheet pile can be easily fabricated or specified for high structural strength, allowing them to be driven by modern hammers to increased working loads thus requiring fewer piles per project, resulting in substantial savings in foundation costs.

Pile capacity is easily verified by either static or dynamic pile testing. Capacity per pile or pile length can be easily optimized to provide exactly the required capacity (including safety factors) to minimize foundation costs. Testing also eliminates the uncertainty of bearing capacity estimates based on static analysis. There is no need to be overly conservative and thus wasteful to protect against failure.

As an additional benefit, sheet pile often gain capacity after installation. Shaft soil strength usually increases with time after pile installation is complete to provide additional load capacity. This phenomenon, called "setup", can result in substantial foundation cost savings when considered in the design and confirmed by testing. The incorporation of setup into the foundation design results in fewer piles and/or shorter piles driven with lighter equipment. The reduction in time, labor and materials provide substantial cost savings to the owner.

Adaptability

Sheet pile are installed to accommodate compression, tension or lateral loads. Piles can be selected to meet the specific needs of the structure, site conditions and budget. You can select from a variety of materials and shapes that best meet your needs.

This article comes from piledrivers edit released