Driven Foundations
Prefabricated piles are driven into the ground using a pile driver. Driven piles are either wood, reinforced concrete, or steel. Wooden piles are made from the trunks of tall trees. Concrete piles are available in square, octagonal, and round cross-sections (like Franki Piles). They are reinforced with rebar and are often prestressed. Steel piles are either pipe piles or some sort of beam section (like an H-pile). Historically, wood piles used splices to join multiple segments end-to-end when the driven depth required was too long for a single pile; today, splicing is common with steel piles, though concrete piles can be spliced with mechanical and other means. Driving piles, as opposed to drilling shafts, is advantageous because the soil displaced by driving the piles compresses the surrounding soil, causing greater friction against the sides of the piles, thus increasing their load-bearing capacity. Driven piles are also considered to be "tested" for weight-bearing ability because of their method of installation; thus the motto of the Pile Driving Contractors' Association.
Read more about this topic: Deep Foundation
Famous quotes containing the words driven and/or foundations:
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—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“For me, it is as though at every moment the actual world had completely lost its actuality. As though there was nothing there; as though there were no foundations for anything or as though it escaped us. Only one thing, however, is vividly present: the constant tearing of the veil of appearances; the constant destruction of everything in construction. Nothing holds together, everything falls apart.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)