This week we return to a typical ICE application in China: steel foundation piles for elevated highways.

 I went to have a look at Shanghai Jianshi’s working set-up at Longyang Road Overpass  and discovered a job site where all the resonance free hammer’s strong points were demonstrated.

·       No resonance damage to existing elevated highways and electricity lines

·       No soil displacement by the installed piles

·       Quick mobilization and demobilization 

·       No need for trucking in and out of excavated soil, bentonite, concrete, or steel rebar.

The construction site is inside an existing ring of flyovers and cut in half by a bicycle tunnel and a three-lane dual carriage road. The construction site is thus divided up in 4 separate working areas. 

The access to the working areas is confined and this limited the choice of piling equipment and the length of the pile sections. The foundation design is for 700mm diameter 50m long steel friction foundation piles.

The 50m long piles were divided in 10m sections, shorter than usual, and the contractor chose to work with mobile cranes instead of a crawler crane. Each successive 10m pile section is securely welded to the previous after that has been driven into the soil. Electric power lines ran within a meter of the piling location and were unaffected by the piling work.

The client brought two sets of Resonance Free hammers. The first three sections driven by medium sized ICE 28RF and the last 2 sections with the large sized ICE 50RF. Using the two hammers on one project gives higher overall fuel economy and allows the project to be complicated within a shorter time.

If you are considering steel friction piles for your project do not hesitate to get in touch with the specialists at ICE. We can put you in touch with all the resources you need to be off to a good start!