STEEL SHEET PILING
Submitted by the PDCA Steel Sheet Pile Committee
The Panama Canal expansion project, also called the
Third Set of Locks Project, doubled the capacity of the
Panama Canal by adding a new lane of traffic allowing
for a larger number of ships, and increasing the width and depth of
the lanes and locks for larger ships to pass.
The new ships, called New Panamax, are about one and a
half times the previous Panamax size, carrying over twice as
much cargo.
The original locks were 110 feet wide, 1,050 feet long and 41.2
feet deep. The third set of locks are 180 feet wide, 1,400 feet long
and 60 feet deep.
The expanded canal began commercial operation in June 2016
and with it initiated a program of U.S. port deepening and berth
development to cater to the post-Panamax class vessels.
Prior to the canal completion, U.S. coastal ports recognized the
need to make their facilities capable of handling the longer and
heavier vessels that would travel through the canal.
Numerous projects have come to bid mostly across the southern
and eastern ports of the U.S., with many adopting steel sheet
piling solutions. Details of the main systems in use today are
reviewed below. These include cellular sheet pile structures,
pipe-Z combined wall systems, beam-Z steel wall systems and
the OPEN CELL sheet pile system.
Cellular structures
Cellular structures are typically designed as self-supporting gravity
walls not requiring any supplementary waling or anchoring for
support. They can be founded directly on bedrock and have little
need for embedment. They are ideal solutions where rock levels are
high or for structures in deep water or where high retained height
is required.
Cellular structures use straight-web sheet piles and are usually
used for temporary cofferdams where a series of individual cells
form large cellular cofferdams. These are used to enable large and
deep excavations to be carried out in dry conditions and often
where the excavations go down to bedrock.
Cellular structures are a standard solution where bedrock levels
are high. Solutions using bending moment resisting sheet piles
always imply a fixation of the sheet pile’s toe into the soil.
Continued on page 103
Watch this video from L.B. Foster Co. about inland and coastal waterway
solutions using steel sheet piling: youtu.be/hfiOCNZaeZY
www.piledrivers.org PILEDRIVER | 101
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/www.piledrivers.org
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