BLASTING TECHNIQUE AIDS STEEL PILE DRIVING

This article describes a new technique, the Rosenstock shock blasting process, developed by Ros Rammbau GMGH of Pinneberg, West Germany and operated in the United Kingdom by Lilley Construction Ltd in conjunction with British Steel Corporation. The process involves loosening the soil strata by means of controlled blasting and driving in the piles before ground reconsolidation takes place. The method owes its development to the pre-splitting technique of the hardrock quarryman. To split a rock or create a fracture line in a face, holes drilled along the proposed break line are loaded with a relatively light, spaced charge of low energy (and high velocity of detonation) explosives and then blasted. After blasting the ground, driving of the piles needs to be carried out as soon as possible as the ground is said to become reconstituted and recompacted from the action of overburden pressure and groundwater. To investigate the feasibility of the process for making the ground at Eltham Wall Hall station bridge site amenable to the driving of sheet piles, it was decided to carry out a piling test in advance of the main bridge works. The test, which is described, was fully successful. It proves both practical and economically viable and showed a further advantage; the vibration waves set up by the hammer blows during the driving of the heavy piles and transmitted through the ground are markedly reduced. (TRRL)

  • Availability:
  • Corporate Authors:

    Foundation Publications Limited

    7 Ongar Road
    Brentwood CM15 9AU, Essex,   England 
  • Publication Date: 1984-10

Media Info

  • Features: Figures; Photos;
  • Pagination: p. 25-27
  • Serial:
    • GROUND ENGINEERING
    • Volume: 17
    • Issue Number: 7
    • Publisher: EMAP CONSTRUCT LIMITED
    • ISSN: 0017-4653

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 00393298
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Source Agency: Transport Research Laboratory
  • Files: ITRD, TRIS
  • Created Date: Jun 30 1985 12:00AM