Cost Effective Of Sheet Piles

Sheet piles 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 piles 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 piles 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.

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