Steel Sheet Pile Walls in Soft Soil

For almost a century, steel sheet pile walls are applied worldwide as earth retaining structures for excavations and quay walls.

Within the framework of the development of European structural codes for Civil Engineering works, the Eurocodes, Eurocode 3 Part 5 for design of steel sheet pile walls was issued in 1997. This code offers possibilities for cheaper and safer steel sheet piling, in comparison with the existing design criteria used in most countries. Two of these design criteria with which so far few experience has been gained, have been closer investigated.

The first concerns allowing plastic hinges in the design of the sheet pile wall, and the second is about taking loss of structural strength and stiffness of double U-sections into account due to oblique bending. For both criteria new design rules have been developed.