Structural Engineer designed the sheets.
Driven length was specified and sheets went to the minimum depth/design length specified.
There was one level of inclined H-pile used as a lateral brace on the water side of wall near top of wall. I referred to that brace as a strut.
The upper river bottom clay is 1 to 2 blow count and the sands and underlying stiff marine clays are 10 to 50 blow count material so one would think you would notice the sheets slow down in rate of penetration when they reached the target layer for the tips.
They also had the ability to review...
The clay did in fact run deeper at that location than the wall was designed for. The original design assumed the fixed earth method.
The contractor and CEI (original designer) just put the sheets in to the specified depth and never made an attempt to monitor rate of penetration, etc. to...
Two things are at issue here:
1. wall designer thinks that the software checks global stability (I don't)
2. designer was CEI on project and did nothing to make sure the tip of the wall was seated into dense material.
I am reviewing a failure of an anchored sheet pile wall (14 ft retained ht) along a river where the designer assumed medium dense conditions at the toe of the sheet but let the contractor stop the sheets in very soft clay, 5 to 10 feet above the actual top of the med. dense material. The wall...
