On Wednesday, June 10, 1998 at 2:00:00 AM UTC-5, Alan Jewell wrote:

Does anyone have experience installing deep sheet pile walls (50-60
feet) in clay or other soils? We have a project where we are
considering the use of a sheet pile wall as a cutoff wall in a dam. The
wall needs to extend 50-60 feet and be anchored into silstone. I have several unanwered questions regarding the use of the sheet pile wall as
a cutoff wall. Any info would be appreciated.

1) Constructability: Is a wall of this depth constructable? Will it require special equipment? How does installation proceed? What are the pitfalls? Any recommendations for design of the sheet pile or
construction techniques? At this length, will the sheet pile panels be subject to enough stress during installation to separate at the joints?
(No separation can be tolerated)

2) We would like to seal the sheet pile joints with an injected epoxy
or other material to cut down on seepage through the joints. Does
anyone have experience with this?

Thanks in advance

This question was posted a long time ago but here are my thoughts:
Sheet piles are temporary and will require grouting the joints, by the Waterloo method or similar. There could also be an issue with the pounding cracking the foundation silstone formation. Suggest using water activated polyurethane foam to grout them to
achieve flexibility. I have used epoxy in jet grouting at nuclear sites and can not recommend it if the soil could be moist. We did successfully jet grout with a special molten wax grout that displaces moisture. The wax (Waxfix 125) cures to a taffy -
like consistency. It contains no water, bonds well to metal, and prevents rust. We used it to seal up buried toxic reactor parts that were super radioactive.

Single fluid type- Jet grouting would work but there is the issue of keeping the holes from deviating at depth. I once used a version of jet grouting at 60 feet that used a construction crane having a 14" square kelly bar that was sufficiently rigid to
minimize this flex.

I have an experimental version of jet grouting that uses a pair of non-rotating drill pipes driven into the ground with oscillating hydraulic hammers, (or operates in pre-drilled holes)that are tethered by a steel cable above the jets. The cable keeps
the jets pointed at each other and acts as a proving bar to assure that the wall is continuous. It cuts on the way down joining two pilot holes into a single panel. The pipes are then indexed to run in one previous hole and one new hole. For soft soil
you can eliminate the jet grouting and just slice through the soil with the cable. You have to use a grout mix filled with hematite to make it denser than soil so that the cut expands instead of pinching shut from adjacent soil pressure.
Ernie Carter, P.E. cartertech@gmail.com

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