The ultimate objective of any driven pile is to carry some kind of load. These loads come from a variety of sources, as seen on the right. Once the loads are established, the pile's resistance to the loads must be established. The interaction of piles and the surrounding soils--axial and lateral--is complex. Computer software and … Continue reading Pile Capacity Programs and Spreadsheet: Axial and Lateral
This page concentrates on practical pile driving information, primarily for the contractor but also for engineers and owners as well. More detailed information (especially for Vulcan hammer owners) can be found in the Vulcanhammer.info Guide to Pile Driving Equipment. A very complete reference for this kind of information is Pile Driving by Pile Buck. Current … Continue reading Pile Driving in Practice
During the early years of stress-wave theory applied to driven piles, the only way it was done was through the wave equation program. One ran the wave equation, then checked it against field performance. However, a simple blow count check wasn't enough. Were the driving stresses predicted properly? How did the performance of the various … Continue reading Pile Dynamics: Field Measurement and Verification of Pile Drivability and Capacity
By the 1920's dynamic formulae were well established in the driven pile industry. Without really consistent methods of static capacity estimation, and given the conservative nature of most foundation design, their weaknesses were not fully appreciated. The event that brought their weakness to the forefront was the development of precast concrete piles. Dynamic formulae assume … Continue reading Wave Equation Analysis
Analytical Interpretation of Pile Installation and Axial Performance Hudson Matlock, Ignatius Lam and Lino Cheang A program of combined experiment and analytical studies is presently underway with the purpose of extending present understanding of the axial behaviour of pile foundations. The analytical developments are designed for back fitting and correlating the experimental results and for … Continue reading Other Monographs on the Wave Equation
For geotechnical practicioners, the wave equation is a phenomenon which is generally dealt with using a finite element or difference computer program. For mathematicians, it is a second order, hyperbolic partial differential equation. Although the computer programs are certainly a solution to these problems (and in the case of the nonlinear phenomena just about the … Continue reading Differential Equations and Laplace Transforms in Soil Dynamics
ZWAVE was Vulcan's foray into the wave equation program field. It was an outgrowth of research that dated back to the late 1970's on the magnitude of impact forces of its hammers on pile tops, so as to estimate both the loads on the equipment and the stresses on the piles. The first tangible result … Continue reading ZWAVE
TNOWAVE was developed by TNO, the Dutch research organisation. It is different from the Smith/TTI/WEAP wave equation programs in that it uses the method of characteristics to analyse wave propagation in piles. We have two variants of this software available and you can take a look at them in the post The Wave Equation after … Continue reading TNOWAVE and the Method of Characteristics
The wave equation has become the standard method for predicting the drivability of piles, along with estimating stresses during driving. However, it's necessary to have some idea of the pile's ultimate capacity and driving resistance, so we are bundling the download of WEAP87 with SPILE, the FHWA program for estimating pile ultimate resistance. WEAP87 WEAP … Continue reading WEAP: Wave Equation Analysis of Pile Driving, with SPILE, Estimation of Pile Ultimate Capacity
With the publication of Smith's seminal work on the wave equation for piles, the concept had found a realistic implementation--in theory at least. But then a problem arose that, although routine today, was something of a novelty at the time. Disseminating the dynamic formulae, like many other scientific and technical techniques, was fairly simple: the … Continue reading TTI Wave Equation Program, with MICROWAVE Program
vulcanhammer.info 