determination of length of steel piles

[lvkb]

I am doing an assessment on a jetty and part of this is to determine the bearing capacity of the steel jetty piles.

In order to do this I need to know the length of embeddment of the piles. Does anyone know of any testing techniques that are available to determine this?

Apparantely sonic testing works for concrete piles but I haven't found anything for steel piles.

 

[jdonville]

lvkb,

Are the original piledriving records available?

Jeff


Jeffrey T. Donville, PE
TTL Associates, Inc.

http://www.ttlassoc.com

 

[BigH]

What kind of steel piles - closed-end pipe, open-end pipe, H-pile, screw pile? How old is the jetty? Do you have any of the geotechnical information besides the pile driving records asked for my Jeffrey - which, if available, is the best method? Who was the pile driving company - they likely have records on installation - they wanted to be paid and they probably got paid by the installed metre (or foot).
Do you have their design details - i.e., the piles' design loads? Are you going to put on more loading and wish to know the reserve of safety that the existing piles have? And, once you have the records, if you can get them, what method of analysis will you use to determine the bearing capacity? There is a lot more necessary in assessing the pile capacity than just the length of the pile that is/appears to be embedded.

 

[Panars]

The pulse echo test method will work for steel piles too. If you can access the top of the pile, it is relatively straightforward.

From the PDI website:

http://pile.com/pdi/products/pit/default.asp

The Pile Integrity Tester is available in two models: PIT-V and PIT-FV. Both are light, battery powered, and operated through a high visibility touch screen.PIT-V reads data from one accelerometer for data analysis in the Time Domain. PIT-FV reads data from an accelerometer and an instrumented hammer or from two accelerometers. It permits force and velocity analysis in the Frequency Domain for a more thorough evaluation of the foundation and allows the investigation of defects near the pile top. PIT-FV may be used to assess of the length of an unknown foundation.