Container terminals around the world are preparing to welcome ever larger container ships. These large vessels require stronger load carrying quays and deeper ship births. Sheet pile manufacturers like Arcelor Mittal have chosen to address these requirements smartly with new designs. Combination walls, consisting of two complementary elements: a primary element (king pile) and a secondary element (intermediary sheet pile), allow for deeper berths while saving steel. Combined walls have the advantages of either extending the length or shortening the length of the sheet piles, allowing for shallower walls, and requiring a capping beam that is easier to construct and requires less concrete to complete.
 
Even when your construction brief doesn’t require complicated sheet pile configurations you could benefit from driving double sheet piles (AZ). Double sheet piles, which have been welded together prior to driving either on the jobsite or in the steel mill, have an extremely competitive section modulus/mass relation. These sections also offer increased inertia and thus reduced deflection allowing the choice of high yield strength steel grades for the most economical solution, and provide a large width resulting in high installation performance. Clients working with No. 4 sheet piles, which are too narrow for some of the larger ICE clamping systems, will also benefit from this design as they will be able to fit the clamp over sheet piles interlock work with the smaller piles will fit larger clamps.
 
These significant time savings are achieved during the installation of combined walls with smartly chosen piling equipment from ICE. ICE has decades of experience driving combi walls and offers a wide range of clamping systems to suit your project specifics. The certainty of choosing the best hammer solution for your project further increases your efficiency in a number of ways: faster driving with more soil friction breaking horse power, and reduced down time with reliable equipment to get the job done on schedule. As up to 85% of installation time is spent preparing the pile for driving (lifting it in position, clamping the pile, other jobsite procedures), driving multiple sheet piles simultaneously will shave off significant time on site.
 
In difficult soil conditions the pull down force of a piling rig can aid the driving of sheet piles through heavy clay. The Liebherr LRB piling rig fitted with a vibratory hammer gives you the certainty of getting the most out of your vibro.
 
If you are considering driving a combi wall gives us a call today so we can suggest the right hammer and clamping solution to get your project off on a flying start!
BELOW: Some suggestions of a combi wall, images courtesy of Arcelor Mittal.