Actually for the best support on this question contact the nearest office of Arcelor - they have a complete engineering department and have fully tested their own sheet piles and know what stresses will fail the interlocks.
I will try this again...
I am working with a Russian company that has a patented technology of using the existing production casings of two well points (a maximum 2km away from each other and a maximum depth of 3km deep) to inject both high frequency and low frequency waves into an oil reservoir...
There are many method for drilling in hard rock however I agree with BigHarvey that the DTH Hammer is the most efficient.
You mention the strength of the rock however is this consistent all the way to proposed tip elevation?
Is there overburden and if so how much?
If drilling in consolidated...
Another option which I have seen in Japan, Korea and parts of Scandinavia is the use of interlocking pipe piles.
Often less expensive pound for pound, pipe is used with fabricated interlocks typically consisting of a smaller pipe with a slot cut in it and a "Tee" which is a small wideflange cut...
There are a few commercially available products out there that help to seal the interlocks - one is WADIT which is made in Germany but distributed in the USA. The other is BIGUMA which I have only seen in Europe.
Both you have to manually place in the interlocks before threading the sheets...
The person to speak to is Jerry - he is the principle at Geotechnical Design Services Inc. near Salt Lake City, UT
I don't have the phone number handy but you can most likely find it on the web or by calling directory assistance.
Having seen the technology first hand it is really exciting - it...
If you are willing to go a little "out of the box", there is a technology that was just brought into the US from Russia which uses EHDE (electro-hydrodynamic effect) which uses an electrode lowered into the concrete to create an insitu wave to compress the surrounding soil in an approximately 2m...
