Posts by Kanwarjot Singh

During initial driving process, open-ended steel piles are driven through the soils at their bases. However, shaft friction will gradually develop between the steel piles and soils inside piles at some time after pile driving. The hitting action of driving hammers induces forces to the soil and later it comes to a stage when the inertial forces of inside soils, together with the internal frictional forces exceeding the bearing capacity of soils at pile toes. Consequently, the soil plug formed is brought down by the piles. Reference is made to M. J. Tomlinson (1977).

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In marine structures where piles are constantly subject to significant lateral and uplift forces induced by berthing operation and wave action, it is necessary to drive the piles to much greater depth. To avoid premature refusal so that insufficient soil cover may develop which is incapable of providing the required lateral and uplift resistance, tubular piles are normally driven open-ended so that they are driving to greater depths than piles with closed ends.

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In the design of marine piles of steel tubular piles with concrete infill, loads from pier deck are taken up by steel tubular piles before the occurrence of corrosion of steel piles above seabed. In fact, it is assumed that steel piles above seabed level will all be corroded after a certain year. The load transfer mechanism after complete corrosion of steel pile above seabed is as follows: loads from pier deck are taken up by concrete infill above the seabed level. Below the seabed level, loads would be transferred to steel piles through frictional forces between concrete infill and steel casings.

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The purpose of minimum toe level is two-fold:

(i) In detailed design stage, ground investigation should be conducted and the approximate level of rockhead is known. Therefore, to avoid the marine piles to be founded prematurely on boulders, minimum toe levels of marine driven piles are specified in contract.

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For marine piles, there are several options available for selection, namely H-piles, circular pipes and box piles.

However, only circular piles and box piles are suitable for marine application because of the following two reasons suggested by G. M. Cornfield (1968):

(i) Circular piles and box piles possess high column buckling strength. For marine structures like jetties, piles are well above seabed level and therefore the column buckling effect is significant when compared with other structures. Therefore, it is essential to use pile sections which have relatively high buckling strength in piers.

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Slip joints are joints which are formed through a complete vertical plane from the cope level to the toe level of seawalls. These joints are designed in blockwork seawalls to cater for possible differential settlements between adjacent panels of seawalls. The aggregates inside the half-round channels in slip joints allow for the vertical movements induced by differential settlement and at the same time providing aggregate interlocking forces among adjacent panels of seawalls to link the panels in one unit against the lateral earth pressure exerted on seawall.

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For an existing land, it is anticipated that there will be no major settlement within the design life of pavement structures. However, for a recently reclaimed land, even with surcharging and installation of vertical drains, some settlement will still occur after the construction.

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For standpipes, they normally contain one plastic tube between its intention is to measure water level only. However, for piezometers, they are used for measuring pore water pressure in a certain depth below ground. For instance, if there are two clayey layers below ground at different depths, a multiple piezometer including two separate piezometers may be sunk at the same borehole to determine the pore water pressure at these layers respectively.

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In vacuum preloading, the drainage boundary of clay is isolated from the atmosphere by a membrane. A partial vacuum (e.g. suction of 80kPa) is applied within the membrane to reduce the water pressure so as to speed up consolidation.

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Trailing suction hopper dredger contains a large hopper for storage and transport of dredged materials. The dredging operation is implemented by a hydraulic dredging system including draghead, suction pip, pumps for taking up the material from seabed and putting them into the hopper.

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