
Straight web steel sheet piles have been produced for more than 100 years already and are used successfully in large civil engineering projects on worldwide scale. They are designed to be used as circular or diaphragm cell retaining structures.
Main fields of permanent as well as temporary applications are deep cofferdams in rivers and seas, dry-docks, quay walls founded on rock, breakwaters, mooring dolphins aso.
Until today, there have not been many design manuals available for straight web steel sheet piles, and none which integrates the new design concepts for the stability analysis of those structures, nor the new state-of-the-art design codes for the resistance properties of steel sheet piles as construction elements.
AM’s brand new Design Manual is to fix this shortcoming and furthermore to enforce the marketing of those cost-effective sheet pile structures.
Being the worldwide leader in steel sheet piling gives us the privilege to work close together with specialized design engineers and contractors that are familiar with these types of retaining structures. This exchange of theoretical and practical experiences is now also to be made available to all the interested market players in civil engineering.
Besides, it is the perfect timing to finalize this long-awaited manual now that the new Eurocodes are being implemented in Europe. The design concept focuses on the ‘EAU 2004’ recommendations, using the ‘partial safety factor’ approach. Nevertheless, we still have a reference design example in this handbook which considers the actual ‘global safety method’.
State-of-the-art design approaches might seem complex in a first comparison, but nowadays the availability of appropriate design software makes it much simpler to optimize such structures and provide expected returns in economical aspects without reducing the design reliability nor the safety concepts.
Naturally, installation is still a challenge which however can be easily mastered provided that state-of-the-art installation procedures as recommended are respected. Useful hints will be found in Chapter 7.
Our intention is to provide the design engineers, consultants, the general and specialized contractors, the project owners and Public Authorities with a comprehensive document that will allow them to understand, design and execute safe and cost-efficient cellular structures for a very large variety of civil engineering applications.
Although we believe that all the necessary information can be found in this invaluable manual, be assured that our well experienced civil engineers can assist you with any question, just as they did for the last decades: optimized design and layout of the cells, installation procedures, lifetime calculations, …. Our in-house design software will certainly be a key tool that will contribute to the optimization of any cellular structure.
Being the first edition of a new manual, we definitely would like to hear from you. Your comments and suggestions are welcome at sheetpiling@arcelormittal.com. We enjoyed writing this manual and hope that you will feel the same pleasure reading it.
Released on 12/10/2009