Raymond Concrete Pile Company (later Raymond International) was in its day the greatest pile driving organisation in the world. It either developed or perfected many of the techniques which are standard for designing and installing driven piles today. The most significant of these was the wave equation, the brainchild of Raymond's chief mechanical engineer, E.A.L. … Continue reading Raymond 60X Hammer
A few months back we posted Driving Concrete Piles Wild, which documented a Vulcan 020 being used on a project to drive concrete cylinder piles wild. Below is a video of a Vulcan 016 driving steel piles wild: https://youtu.be/t4Zh5ZaeVgc Vulcan 016 driving a steel pile pile wild. Contractor is J.E. Borries; video courtesy of Pile Hammer … Continue reading Driving Steel Piles Wild
December 4, 1991 On the same day that Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) officially came to an end and halted its longtime operations, that airline’s final flight took place. Captain Mark Pyle piloted the airplane Clipper Goodwill, a Pan Am Boeing 727-221ADV, for Flight 436 between the cities of Bridgetown, Barbados, and Miami, Florida. […]The … Continue reading The Final Flight of an Influential Airline — Transportation History
In the late 1980's Vulcan furnished GRL with extensive information on its hammers, cushion configurations and cap weights for what was then the WEAP86/WEAP87 program. Most of that was carried over into the GRLWEAP program. One item that is not well represented in the database are the weights for the wood caps. From a Vulcan … Continue reading Weight of Vulcan Wood Pile Caps for Wave Equation Analysis
Our newest research item is this one, which is an expansion of the work with steel piles earlier this year. Abstract is as follows: The application of semi-infinite pile theory to the behaviour of driven piles has been studied since Parola (1970). Most of the effort, however, has been concentrated on piles which do not … Continue reading Concrete Pile Head Response to Impact
It may seem odd on this site, but we present the Delmag Guide to Driving Sheet Piles, which Delmag (a one-time competitor of Vulcan's) put out many years ago. It's a nice and comprehensive guide to the subject for impact hammers; it's a subject that's not always well understood. Diesel hammers (in Europe at least, … Continue reading Delmag on Driving Sheet Piles
In the midst of all that's going on these days, one anniversary (for this site at least) doesn't need to pass unmentioned: this month sixty years ago, Vulcan moved its operation from Chicago to Chattanooga, after 108 years in the "Windy City." Everything around the operation went according to plan, from the plant construction to … Continue reading Sixty Years of Vulcan in Chattanooga
Driving piles wild, i.e., without any leader of any kind, is something that takes a great deal of skill and forethought by the contractor. Like piles driven with a stub leader, it is necessary at least to use some kind of template to insure that the pile is on location and in alignment, and also … Continue reading Driving Concrete Piles Wild
Below is a video tour of the SPW 2006 sheet pile software, the academic use software developed by Dr. Arnold Verruijt at the University of Delft. https://youtu.be/_-wld-TBRpY Here is the tutorial series on the software: Analyzing Sheet Pile Walls with SPW 2006: Part I, IntroductionAnalyzing Sheet Pile Walls with SPW 2006: Part II, Cantilever WallsAnalyzing Sheet Pile … Continue reading SPW 2006 Sheet Pile Software Video Tour
Most residences do not require pile foundations, but some do, generally because of the combination of the size of the house and the geotechincal stratigraphy (read soft.) In Vulcan's history this is generally associated with the New Orleans area, but recently a Vulcan #2 was used to drive residential piling in Connecticut. The whole post … Continue reading Using a Vulcan #2 for Residential Piling
