The Types of Steel Sheet Piles
Since the first usage of steel sheet piles in the early part of the 20th Century, sheet piles had evolves into one of the most versatile tools in the arsenal of civil engineering. With modern steel manufacturing techniques and improve in technology, modern steel sheet pile are stronger, lighter and versatile.
Improvement is not only in the manufacturing of the sheet piles but also in the installation techniques. In this post we will touch on the different types of steel sheet piles or the sections as commonly known. I will touch on the installation at a later post.
Nowadays steel sheet piles evolves into other sections forms. Starting from the common U-section, sheet piles now comes in Z-section, Flat or Arch section. Flat or straight-web piles are used to form cellular cofferdams.The other sections are used in a wide variety of situation in civil engineering works.
Regardless of the type of sections, steel sheet piles are mostly hot formed with occasionally some cold rolled. The difference is that cold-formed steel shapes are formed at room temperature, while hot-rolled steel shapes are formed at elevated temperature. From a design point of view, cold-formed steel is much thinner than hot-rolled steel.
As can be seen in the attached diagrams, the dimension of sheet piles are labeled b, h, a and e, except for the flat section sheet piles. They represent the Width, Depth, Web Thickness and Flange thickness respectively. In the flat section sheet piles, the width is labeled L and the depth W. The thickness is labeled as e. Theses dimension varies and by doing so sheet piles can have various strength.
If you look up at any tables of the sheet piles property example Larssen sheet pile, you will notice that the web thickness is thinner than the flange. The web is thinner to allow it to be worked more easily to form the interlocking. Further more designers had calculated before hand the optimum thickness of both the web and flange before the sheet piles are made. Both thickness affect the strength of the sheet piles. Again if you look at sheet piles tables, the strength is represented by the “Moment of Inertia” and the “Section Modulus”.
U- Section Sheet Piles
A U-section sheet pile is in the form of the letter U, with a deep depth and wide width. The depth becomes twice when interlocked.
Z-Section Sheet Pile
A Z-section sheet piles, looks like a slanted letter Z with equally deep depth when interlocked.
Flat Section Sheet Piles
The flat section sheet piles have neligible depth. Essentially its a flat sheet of steel with interlocking features on both sides.
Arch section sheet Piles
The Arch section sheet piles is a U shape with a shallow depth. The shallow depth resulted in an arch shape section.
