Sheet Pile Driving & Testing M5 East Project Sydney, Australia

A new 10km length of freeway in Sydney Australia, was opened in December 2001 with a total contract cost of https://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> $ 794 Million (AUD). As part of the project&s;s ventilation tunnels, Vibro-pile (Aust.) Pty Ltd was contracted to drive sheet piles through challenging ground conditions. The sheets were designed to form part of the permanent cut & cover tunnel and were driven to depths of up to 20 m. The sheets were required to resist both compression and tension loading. Early driveability predictions noted that the sheets would require impact driving to these depths after practical refusal to vibratory driving. In order to minimise project costs and meet time schedules, dynamic load testing of the sheet piles during impact driving was undertaken by Pile Test International (PTI). The construction method of using a combination of vibratory driving & impact driving and complementary dynamic testing was successful in completion of the contract to specification requirements.