Driven cast-in-situ piles installed using hydraulic hammers: Installation energy transfer and driveability assessment

The ability of hydraulic pile driving hammers to overcome energy losses during freefall enables a greater proportion of the impact energy to be transferred to the pile than is possible with diesel hammers. This percentage, termed the energy transfer ratio, is not routinely measured in practice however, and there is an element of uncertainty regarding appropriate energy transfer ratios to adopt in driveability analyses. In light of such uncertainties, the energy transfer ratios of four- and five-tonne hydraulic hammers were assessed during installation of driven cast-in-situ (DCIS) piles at several sites in the United Kingdom. The piling rigs were fitted with instrumentation enabling the hammer velocity (and hence kinetic energy) at impact to be inferred for each blow during installation, with the corresponding energy transferred to the closed-ended steel installation tube ascertained using a Pile Driving Analyzer. The results of the study showed that energy transfer ratios were strongly dependent on the hammer drop height, with transfer ratios of 90% and above only achievable for drop heights in excess of 50% of the maximum value. Driveability analyses using measured energy transfer ratios from the fieldwork, as well as the traditional method using an assumed energy transfer ratio which is independent of drop height, yielded good agreement with measured driving records at a clean sand site. In contrast, poorer predictions were apparent for both methods at another site, where the coarse-grained strata had higher fines contents and significant layering, with the traditional method (assumed energy transfer ratio) over-predicting the maximum transferred energy and concealing the influence of dynamic soil properties on driveability. The findings of the study would suggest that lower energy transfer ratios may need to be considered in driveability predictions for these pile types (i.e. steel or DCIS piles) if lower drop heights are used during driving.