Sheet pile walls are retaining walls constructed to retain earth ,water or any other material.These walls are thinner in section as compared to masonry walls and they are generally used for the following:

-water front structures ,for example:in buiding wharfs,quays,and piers;

-building diversion dams,such as cofferdams;

-river bank protections;

-retaining the sides of cuts made in earth.

The materials used for building a sheet pile retaining wall may be:

-timber;

-reinforced concrete or steel.

Reinforced concrete sheet piles are precast concrete members,usually with a tongue-and-groove joint. These piles are relatively heavy and bulky.They displace large volumes of solid during driving.This large volume displacement of soil tends to increase the driving resistance. The design of piles has to take into account the large driving stresses and suitable reinforcement has to be provideded for this purpose.

The most common types of sheet pile wall used are steel sheet piles. Steel sheet piles possess several advantages over the other types such as:

-they are very resistant to high driving stresses as developed in hard or rocky material;

-they are lighter in section;

-they may be used several times.

-they can be used either below or above water and with a long perioad of life exploatation;

-suitable joints which do not deform during driving can be provided with the purpose of having a continuous wall.

-the pile length either by welding or bolting.

Sheet pile walls are available in the market in various shapes but every shape has specific benefits such as:

-the archweb and Z-piles are used to resist large bending moments,as in anchored or cantilever walls;

-shallow-arch piles with coresponding smaller section modulus are used for smaller moments;

-straight-web sheet piles are used where the web will be subjected to tensions as in cellular cofferdams.

This article comes from sheet-pile-retaining-wall-design edit released